Multiple Sclerosis: The Importance of Early Treatment
- Saturday, August 15, 2009, 11:05
- Multiple Sclerosis
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- Dick:
- Starting an ABC medication, I would have to imagine is also for a patient a difficult step. What advice do you give patients when they are just diagnosed with MS? And then, how do you help them choose which medication may be right for them?
- Dr. Stefoski:
- I talk to the person and kind of reveal all the important information about each one of the medications and then figure out what the person herself or himself would consider the most important. And invariably, it’s the disabilities – weakness, imbalance, coordination problems, vision, fatigue, and all that stuff. And then I tell them, which one of the three medications that we have in the U.S. is most likely to slow down progression along that line.
- Dick:
- Lisa, do you still remember how you felt when you learned of your diagnosis?
- Lisa:
- Oh, vividly. I don’t know that it’s one of those things people often forget. The thing with me is it had been coming down the pike for some time because when I was diagnosed in ‘96, I’d already been undergoing about six years of sort of strange symptoms and seizures, vertigo, dizziness, etc. And so when I got the diagnosis, I had mixed feelings. But it was nice to know that one, I wasn’t a hypochondriac, and two, that at least now I knew that. I could get my arms around this thing and I could at least do whatever it was I could do to combat it because it’s really hard to fight a specter that has no name, no face, and yet you’re sick.
- Dick:
- How long after your diagnosis, Lisa, did you decide to start a medication?
- Lisa:
- Almost immediately. I’ve often been asked how did I decide whether or not to start medication. For me there was never a question but that I would choose some therapy and get on some medication because I knew that there was some progression or at least some development in terms of the medical research and things that had gone on, and there were things and drugs available to treat MS. So, it wasn’t a question of whether and when I decided. It was immediately. It was more a question of which one.
- Dick:
- How, then, did you choose your current therapy, and what advice did you get from the medical staff when you began treatment?
- Lisa:
- There wasn’t a lot of literature available at that point. I do remember a book that was commonly available. When I took that home and read it, I about fell off my chair thinking, “There’s got to be something a little more heartening than this, and I refuse to look at it this way.” My doctor, however, was very good about explaining to me what my options were and that there were, at that point, only Avonex and Betaseron. And although we knew Copaxone was coming down the pike, it wasn’t there as yet, I don’t believe. And if it was, it was very new.
- Dick:
- On the telephone, we have Jan in Oklahoma. Jan, go ahead.
- Jan:
- I was diagnosed with MS in 1991, but I didn’t start on Avonex. I’m at the end of the third year. Does it make a significant difference if you didn’t start on it right away because Avonex wasn’t available then?
- Dr. Stefoski:
- Yes, it is better to start medication earlier. And it doesn’t mean that the medication will not work for you. It will. And I’m sure it’s working for you now.
- Jan:
- Yes, it is.
- Dr. Stefoski:
- Avonex will slow down progression of MS or progression of disabilities and attacks and MRI changes, everything else, at any point when you start it, except the results are better if you start it earlier. So, yes, you will derive benefit from having started maybe 14 years into MS, and I think you ought to continue on it for as long as it seems that it’s working for you or until a better drug or a cure comes about.
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