Hi everyone. My name is Britt and I'm a hot MS. Thought everyone needed a little introduction. I am a wife, a mother of two, yorkie mom, creative beast, advocate for MS and a singer-songwriter and now MS Warrior. I was diagnosed with Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis in September of 2019. I am 30 years old and live in Orange County CA. My family is my world. I have a set of 4 parents. I don't believe in the term "step" in parenting. I believe we are all one tribe. Best part is they all love each other and get along. What a blessing right? Until they all have the same opinion and it differs from yours. Then it's 4 against 1. No Bueno.
Anyway back to MS. I married the man of my dreams on June 1st of 2019. A few months prior I had taken a very bad fall down the stairs. Took my breath away. All the way down solid hard laminate floors right on my tailbone. When I crawled my way back up the stairs to call my husband I knew I had really hurt myself. Iced iced, walked like a Disney witch for a few weeks. Finally about 3 months later I noticed when I was standing up right and putting on my underpants that I couldn't lift my left leg into the hole of my panties. It wouldn't rise as high as my right leg. I didn't think anything of it. But then noticed more and more how weak my left leg was compared to the right. I would test my right leg and hold it up bent at an angel and the right side was fine. When I would do the same for my left leg it would slowly start falling. I was unable to hold it up. As hard as I tried it would not stay up. All strength was gone.
I went to see my primary and let him know about the fall and my growing lack of ability on my left side. He did a series of in office tests, very basic and informed me he would like me to follow up with a neurologist. I thought oh here we go, slipped disc, back surgery, cutting me open, fantastic. All because I had to wear extra fuzzy pajama socks while trying to carefully walk down our smooth and slippery laminate stairs. All those socks have been thrown out by the way. Long gone they are. Death socks they should be called. New Socks! Hey wear these if you want to eat it down your stairs! Anyways, off to the neurologist I went.
She went through a series of in office tests and my left leg seemed to have hyper sensitive nerve reactions compared to the right. Poking tests, balance tests, I used to be a dancer, I knew how to balance properly but wasn't able to anymore on my left side. She ordered a series of MRI's and asked her final question of our doctor visit. "Do you have a history of Multiple Sclerosis in your family?". Reluctant to answer I swallowed loud and said "yes my father was diagnosed 6 years ago". He has since lost quite a lot of ability to walk and lost vision in his left eye. She ordered the MRI's and referred me to an MS specialist.
Disclosure- MRI's suck when you are terrified of small spaces and are severely claustrophobic.
They threw me in the metal coffin. I already knew the answers of what the results would be. Not being negative but I've always been very in touch with my body. I just knew something was off with my body on a serious level.
MRI results. And the winner is....MS and me. I was yes in shock right off the bat but honestly felt comforted knowing that many symptoms that I had been experiencing for years all made sense now. Lack of energy even after getting tons of sleep, lack of ability in my leg, lack of balance, forgetting things like major life events, my memory was just junk it seemed, bouts of brain fog. I honestly had chalked it up to stress and PTSD from a previous escape from a terrible marriage. However the divorce literally almost killed me. Finding my now husband was a gift from God to bring me back to life again. I credit this to him, for changing my life and helping me find the me I had lost years prior. Everything made sense now. All the weird question marks in life now had a name. Which kinda was a relief to me.
So here we are. After 4 hours of MRI's, 23 blood tests (yes they really filled 23 vials of blood)- (Yes i passed out on the last one), more neurological testing; Secondary Progressive MS and me. I started reading as much as I could. Selma Blair had come out not too long ago to the public with her diagnosis. My father was a great source of information as well as he had been battling Primary Progressive MS for years. My support system was and still is huge. Friends, family, my work family, everyone was just showering me with love and support. Don't get me wrong I still had freak out moments seeing other peoples storys of going from being diagnosed to being in a wheelchair a year later. But that's the mystery of MS. It's all different. It's never the same for anyone. So my story will never be like yours...we are all snowflakes in this blizzard of a questionable explainable still incurable disease. But unique and united we stand.
So this is me. I write music, I sing, I perform, I love who I am and strive to be the best version of myself. However I can move people that's my goal. We got one life and if this is the card we are dealt we better know how to play the game well. I'm just Britt. Not a cripple, not a gimp, yes I walk with more "swag" as I like to call it now but it makes me special. I view being diagnosed with MS as a blessing. God wanted me to walk this walk. He know's what he's doing so I'm confident in his decision for my life. One day a time.
I'm Britt and I'm a hot MS.
xo