One More Toss of the Stone

Okay, I understand that we are all dead tired by now of hearing about kidney stones, but I just want to add a quick note before leaving the subject--hopefully forever. As of 10:10 am this morning I have not had to pass another stone, and I am hoping and praying that this is because there are no more stones to pass.

In the future we may try to avoid these by drinking lots of water, trying to eat a balanced diet, and avoiding things that are known to cause kidney stones--coffee, for instance, dehydration, too much vitamin D, and (at least in my now freaked out state of mind) Copaxone.

The bearing that MS has on stones, and stones on MS, is several fold. As mentioned, the injectable MS treatment, Copaxone, has been shown to cause stones in some people. This is at least partly due to the fact that Copaxone dehydrates, and dehydration causes kidney stones. The ingestion of too much vitamin D also causes kidney stones. We, as MS sufferers, are told to take vitamin D, since vitamin D deficiency is thought to be causative of MS. Well, vitamin D as it turns out also causes kidney stones, and so no more vitamin D for me. I would much rather stick with MS.

Any kind of stressful situation is bound to cause either a worsening in ones baseline MS symptoms, or even a new attack. Because of the physical stress on my body over the last week, my familiar MS symptoms have clearly worsened. My feet and legs, for instance, have returned to the severity of numbness that accompanied the initial attack over 2 years ago; i.e. I cannot really feel my feet at all and my legs feel rather like they were made from baseball bats rather than flesh, muscle and bone. In addition, a generally spaced out, congested, stuffy sort of sensation has returned to my brain, accompanied by confusion and a painful slowness of thought. Along with those good old hissing sounds I used to experience. Very hard to describe, and so I won't even try right now.

The goods news, though, is that this all seems to be an exacerbation rather than a relapse. And so I gradually return to my former state of ill-health with joy and thankfulness.