Re: New to site - reply to Kathy

[Guest guest]

June 4, 2004

Dear Kathy,

Thanks for replying to my email about low dose naltrexone. I am

grateful to you for sharing your experience.

I am trying to figure out which of your symptoms LDN seems to

help. Then if those symptoms matched mine, I would think that it

was worth it to try it.

I gather that pain was one of your major problems. I have not had

it except rarely, though I have heard from other people that it can

be terrible. You way of explaining it was especially helpful,

saying that LDN had improved 98% of your pain, leaving you with 2%

to deal with via taking aspririn. I am very glad that LDN helped

you so much.

Did you have other MS symptoms too?

What are my symptoms? I will give you a list of the major ones.

Because of all these problems, I work only part time (40%). I also

have a service dog who pulls my wheelchair.

Fatigue in all parts of my body, but it feels more like weakness.

My eyes get so tired that I can't read for very long. My legs get

so weak that I can't walk more than about 40 feet, and I can't stand

for long at all. My hands tire if I do repetitive tasks; for

example I can't brush the dog because it fatigues my arm too much.

Depression. Both the sad and desperate kind, and the I-can't-think-

straight-kind. I take Manerix for this.

Vision: I have had a lot of optic neuritis and lost some vision,

though it has come back mostly thanks to IVIG.

Speech: in 1988 I lost the ability to speak because my jaw muscles

became too weak to make the motions of speech. Thanks to IVIG, the

talking is better but I still can't talk on demand, or as much as I

want to in order to express myself.

Dry eyes and thirst: the doctors do not know what causes this, and

it may not be MS.

Did you have any of these symptoms? If you did, what was the effect

of LDN on them?

If I took LDN I would have to give up Betaseron, which I also

take. Betaseron does not make anything better, but when I stop it,

the disease gets worse. So I am reluctant to stop it unless I

believe that LDN might really be a good alternative.

Thank you for reading this long list of symptoms. I look forward to

your reply.

Best,

gmckimsm

> Hi aamenten,

>

> Welcome to the board.I have SPMS and have had MS for 23 years. LDN

stops progression and some people have some symptom improvement. I

was one of those people. It took away 98% of my pain so now I can

handle to 2% with asprin. It took away my fatigue and I can walk

without assistance when I was using a walker to get around the

house.Alot of symptoms went away when I stopped taking Betaseron. If

you are taking a narcotic pain killer, you have to go off of it at

least a week before starting LDN.

>

>

> Hope all is well,

>

> Kathy

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