Link between multiple sclerosis and glandular fever as a child

Main Category: Multiple Sclerosis
Article Date: 01 Jul 2004 - 9:00 PDT


I concur with Canadian researchers' findings regarding the link between multiple sclerosis and glandular fever as a child, as described in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) albeit without having had opportunity to read thoroughly the scientific article in its entirety), only having recently read a brief synopsis of the study in "Medical News Today" archives. And my opinion is drawn strictly from subjective data and interpretation -- my own. Diagnosed with probable "relapsing-remitting" multiple sclerosis in 1999, there has been but one certainty. There has been nothing "probable" about it. IT IS.
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If my Mother were alive today, without a professional opinion to back her up she would tell the medical community and its neurological sub-specialists where I acquired multiple sclerosis, as there is no "known" genetic predisposition to the disease on either side of my family.

During July of my 13th year (1967), I contracted a virus, which was mysterious and puzzling to pediatricians, endocrinologists and immunologists at Duke University Medical Center, where anything "mysterious and puzzling" always seems to eventually find its way to a clue, unlocking the mystery; thus ultimately solving the medical puzzle at hand.

For ten days, I was an inpatient, and experienced what I considered as intense lethargy. It might as well have been ten years, as I had then and still have today what is known as ADHD --Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity. (My brand is severe and as such, when I was a pre-teen, inactivity of any kind -- mind, body, or spirit -- was without doubt not in my vocabulary.

During these ten days spent in hospital purgatory, I ran a low-grade fever of between 99F and 101F; suffered a complete loss of appetite and near dehydration -- this from an otherwise healthy eater; and healthier drinker of fluids, as I was and remained as an adult, an active participant in team and individual sporting events. But I was simply too tired to eat or drink and was literally to exhausted to talk to or receive visitors.

As a child with a birth-to-present-day phobia against anyone in a white coat, I was too fatigued to even care if a "doctor" examined me, much less if an entire legion of "white coats" gave me a once-over, ten times a day.

My mother was beside herself with angst and ferocity at the medical establishment for not coming up with an immediate diagnosis, and unleashed even more fury at my father and me as she had repeatedly warned both of us about the risks and dangers of swimming in the local public swimming pool. "It's dangerous," she would exclaim, and would add, "I don't care how much chlorine they put in that water. It'll turn your hair green, and you'll still get sick!"

When I wound up in the hospital with what the doctors finally diagnosed as mononucleosis because "nothing else fit," my Mother simply shook her head and said, "I told you so."

Years went by without a second thought as to the "P" until the summer of 1997 when I was knocked over by a rather large antiques display cabinet in an antiques mall - my own, as I was stocking it with new items for display. A freak accident, I should have been killed when the crush of its 450 pounds fell directly upon my neck, but "there but for the Grace of God go I?" A Victorian ladies fainting settee broke my fall from grace and spared me from death, but not from leaving me with two herniated cervical discs.

Refusing to accept archaic methods of conventional surgery on the East Coast, I opted for non FDA-approved, ergo insurance-denied but sound and proven to work endoscopic surgery on the West Coast, of which I have never regretted. It was a calculated risk and a lot of money, but it worked…but then something when very wrong.

Pandora's box unleashed a fury within, which pales in comparison with anything I ever imagined coming from the pages of Dante's Inferno. It was as if Dracula came in the middle of the night and sucked all of my good blood from me, particularly during the summer months; I lost feeling in a toe, and first paid no attention to it, thinking I'd stepped on a Victorian hatpin - a likely occurrence in the antiques trade.

But then I slammed my finger in a door that cannot be slammed and nearly lost my right index finger above the joint. That was the beginning of the "incidences" that raised my suspicions that things were not right. Then as I was readying a rare French Art Deco etching to place on the wall, I knew I was about to step on it with my foot, and in a millisecond, I told my brain, "Don't do that, you idiot. That's a $20,000 piece of…. oops…was…" That's when I went to a neurologist. "What the heck is going on with me?

And yes, I was a believer, not a Doubting Thomas, from Day One, long before most neurologists even accepted the notion of the Canadian researchers' findings, that there is indeed a strong correlation between the disease and a latent virus, just waiting in the wings to be unleashed by a bump on the head, a jolt of some kind, or some other physiological phenomenon. Who knows?

If both physician and patient can open collective minds and work together to "see" the possibilities, rather blind themselves on what is not possible; never venturing outside the box of textbook theory and conventional "wisdom," the evidence to solidify the "link" might well be etched in stone, if not the human brain. To that extent, we know so little that indeed…anything is possible.

Written by: Wanda Lee Wilson Bond Powers

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