At that time, I was managing a kitchen at a busy lakeside bar and grille. We were about to go into what we hoped would be a busy and lucrative summer.

The Olympics in Atlanta were a few day’s away, along with a local PGA Tour event. There was an air of excitement around the lakes.

On a Monday morning following a late Sunday evening, I was having some difficulty lifting my left leg as I walked. Tripping on the edges and lips of carpets and kitchen mats. I was also experiencing pins and needles in my left arm, which I attributed to my sleeping position.

Pondering my next task, I asked a coworker what they thought, and they suggested I go to a hospital and that I might be having a stroke.

So, off I went to the nearest ER. In 1996, it wasn’t out of the ordinary to use the emergency department as a primary care department, and besides, I didn’t have any health insurance. After waiting just a short time, they quickly rolled me into radiology for a CT scan. The results showed a half-quarter-sized mass on the front of my brain. The next step would scare the dickens out of me. They would need a biopsy to see if the mass was what they feared it might be. So they booked me an extended-stay room with a stranger and told me brain surgery would be in the morning. Shew, what a Monday this has turned out to be.

In the meantime, I would have a parade of doctors and specialists coming to my room and asking me all sorts of questions about my lifestyle and family history. After about an hour, one of them, Dr. Shapiro, was questioning me about my mother, who had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the 1980s. Although there wasn’t any research to support it, maybe I could also have MS, and he wanted to do a test that would keep me from going under the knife for a dangerous, complex surgery. A spinal tap would reveal bands common in multiple sclerosis. I agreed to proceed with the spinal tap.

Up until that time, the only “spinal tap”, I knew was the 80’s hair metal flick. I was about to get the “and now for something completely different”, version.

You have to lay on a very cold radiology table on your tummy with your backside all exposed to the world. On the left is a monitor showing my lower back x-ray.

They need to extract spinal fluid using a very long needle, and all they use is a type of Novocain and local anesthesia. Meanwhile, all this is being shown on that monitor. One wrong move, and well, stay very still while this enormous needle is inserted and fluid is drawn out for analysis and testing. Holy cow! After the procedure is complete, you need to lay still on your tummy for at least 24 hours. I also experienced the worst headache ever.

By the next morning, the results were back. The clonal bands were present, and so my diagnosis began. Surgery had been averted. My MS journey had just begun.

When you get diagnosed with a chronic disease, it’s pretty overwhelming at first.

The what, when, and how begin. And then, what the hell do I do now?

For the previous five years, I’d been in food service and had become a very good line cook and kitchen manager.

It’s a very stressful gig and sometimes requires long hours in hot kitchens. It was becoming more and more obvious that my current career would be an issue.

Two things that affect multiple sclerosis are heat and stress.

Restaurant work is grueling and very stressful. It gets very hot at times in most kitchens. There is no air conditioning either.

The next few years were challenging but manageable most of the time. Medications for multiple sclerosis in the late 1990s were quite costly. Without medical coverage, I was forced to figure it out on my own. I continued to work in restaurants for a short time but eventually had to end my culinary journey.

It just so happened that I had been a cashier in the 80s and chose to work in convenience and gas stores. The first one I would work at offered health insurance, so I jumped on it.

I didn’t have it very long before I had my first real exacerbation. The left side of my face decided it would go droopy. It was difficult for me to speak, and I appeared as though I was experiencing a stroke. I knew it was multiple sclerosis and proceeded to my neurologist, who put me on daily infusion therapy. After 5 days, I was back to normal.