Crysten Story

My name is Crysten. On July 17th of 2024, at the age of 24, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. I had gone camping with my boyfriend and some friends and noticed that my left leg had gone almost completely numb, besides the feeling of a thousand needles piercing into it when anything would lightly touch it. I had ended up slicing my leg open as a result of this. Over the next few days, I noticed that almost the same thing was happening to my left rib area. It was numb unless my shirt was touching it, then it would feel like needles were stabbing me, and it would get severely itchy. The night that we got back, I had gone into the ER to find out what was going on. They didn't do anything besides take an X-ray of my chest. They didn't feel that it was necessary to look at anything else besides that, even though the X-ray didn't show anything besides my heart, not even the ribs that were having problems. They discharged me, telling me that if it didn't get better within the next week, to come back. The following week, I returned with the same symptoms, besides now having complete numbness in my leg; even with that, I still had full motion of it and was able to control it. When I arrived at the ER after dropping my daughter off at school, I voiced my worries to the doctor about getting an MRI due to having a family history of MS and knowing what some of the signs were that my family members have had. It took them till around 3 pm to do anything, and it was a CT. At around 5 pm, when they found nothing on the CT, they finally took me for an MRI. I was back in the MRI area till about 8 pm. You can see the results at the hospital that I went to as soon as they are finished. Once I got back into the room, I looked at my scans and could see clearly as day that I had Lesions on both my brain and my spine. I sent a message to all 3 of my siblings telling them what was happening. My sister automatically called me from another state to talk to the doctor. With having the family history and having the suspicion that MS was what was happening, I surprised myself when I broke down. I knew that MS was the biggest possibility, so I was prepared. Being told when the doctor came in that there are signs of years' worth of lesions, I think, is what did it. My brother raced to the hospital and sat with me when I got a steroid infusion to try and counteract the effects of the lesions. They then wanted to admit me into the hospital for a week to try getting the symptoms under control. I did not do that since I am the sole provider of my household, and I needed to work. For the next week, I would return to the hospital for a few hours' worth of infusions. It took until October of 2024 for me to be able to see an MS specialist neurologist. She then got me set up with an infusion medication called Rituxan, which is an every-6-month infusion. Unfortunately, with the medication, there are limitations on what it will do for my body. My doctor told me that the medication is going to be trying to just stop the progression of the lesions and MS, and that my current symptoms will most likely always be there. I was put on Gabapentin to hopefully try minimizing the effect of the previous symptoms, and she is hopeful that we might be able to help with the current symptoms. Thankfully, I haven't noticed any major life changes that I have had to make due to the MS. I do know that with the MS, I am scared of some day being wheelchair-bound and scared of doing anything major that might make it worse. Before the diagnosis, I had been trying to go to the gym often to get myself into a better body condition, but now I'm scared that I will overdo it and cause worse aspects for it.