Home to You by Cheryl Wolverton

Author:Cheryl Wolverton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-07-10T20:12:25+00:00

Carolyne handed Meghan the papers. “Multiple sclerosis is a central-nervous-system disorder. Your body sees the fatty tissue that surrounds your optic nerves, your spine and your brain, as an invader and attacks it.

Where your nerves are attacked determines what type of symptoms you’ll have. For instance, since you are having problems with one of your legs, your spine is probably being attacked somewhere, I would guess.”

“What do you mean, attacked?” Sarah asked.

Carolyne smiled, glad Sarah was curious enough to participate. “Meghan’s body, for unknown reasons, has started eating away the fatty tissue that surrounds her nerves. And when it’s happened and that fatty tissue is gone, her brain will tell her leg to move, but it’ll take a longer time for her leg to get the message, if it gets it at all. If she’s hot, the message takes even longer to get Cheryl Wolverton

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to where it’s going, which means the muscles won’t re-spond like they should. So, when she tells her leg to move, it might work fine until she goes outside in the middle of a Texas summer and then decides to walk five miles in the heat.”

Meghan nodded. “I knew that much.”

Carolyne reached out and took her hand. “There’s more, honey. Some of the damage will go away. Give it six months or so to see. And they now have medications that can help slow the progression of the disease.”

Meghan didn’t look as if she believed her. “My grandmother wasn’t on anything.”

“That’s because they didn’t have them back then.

They’re called the A.B.C.R. drugs. Each letter stands for one of the four drugs they have for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis—Avonex, Betaseron, Copax-one and Rebif. A neurologist prescribes them. They work to slow down the progression of the disease and, from what I’ve read, a lot of women never end up in a wheelchair.”

“Women?” Meghan asked.

Carolyne waved her hand. “And men, though it seems if you are a woman, you are twice as likely to get this disease as a man, and the farther away from the equator you live, the more likely you are to get it.”

“Why is that?” Sarah asked, and Carolyne noted she had stopped working altogether and was listening intently.

“They don’t know. And it seems if you are Anglo-Saxon—white,” she explained to Sarah, “your chances of contracting the disease are much higher.”

“So that’s why you use a cane?” Sarah asked.

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Meghan shook her head. “I have trouble with balance because of my leg.”

“And that might clear up,” Carolyne informed her,

“unless there is permanent damage.”

For the first time Meghan looked hopeful. “You mentioned that earlier. But how?”

“The fatty tissue grows back. Only if the nerve end-ings are permanently damaged will you sustain long-term symptoms. Meghan, it’s all here in the papers I printed. You really need to read this and find out more about your disease. There is such hope, but you should be on medication.”

“It won’t stop the MS, though, will it?”

Carolyne shook her head. “No, honey. But with God and the joy and peace only He can give you, you will be more than a conqueror.

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