Donna - US: Sjogren's, Multiple Sclerosis (MS) (LDN, low dose naltrexone) from LDN Research Trust on Vimeo.
Today, we're joined by Donna from the United States and Donna takes LDN for multiple sclerosis and Sjogren's syndrome. Thank you for joining us, Donna.
Donna: This is Donna. I'm doing well. Thank you.
Linda Elsegood: could you tell us when you first noticed there was something wrong with you?
Donna: Well, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis amass 2006 this month. So it's spent this sentence.
Linda Elsegood: And what about the Sjogren's? When, when did you develop that?
Donna: Yeah, well, I always had something wrong. I knew with me. And just to give you a little background, it's been. Ten years or more before I was back most with ms. And I was always told her I was working too hard at witness stressful for situations. And I kept telling the doctors, no, that's not it. And so finally the test came back positive. Not, but they couldn't have a tell me 100% certainty. That's what I had, but all everything pointed to in Austin. So that's the name? They did it in 2006.
Linda Elsegood: Okay. How old were you when you first notice that, you know, you've got these symptoms?
Donna: Oh, gosh. I would say when I first started receiving, sometimes it happened then as far back as the 19 late 1980s.
So in 2006 is when I first was diagnosed, but it was intermittent from the 1980s until I was actually diagnosed. But it slowly to grow.
Linda Elsegood: How old were you in the 1980s.
Donna: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, now I have no problem with my age. I'm 57 now. So the 1980s, I was what? 30, the early thirties. So with that point, I was diagnosed 47.
Linda Elsegood: Okay. If it makes you feel any better im 60 this year Um, and I've got MS.
Linda Elsegood: so when you were in your thirties, and you had these symptoms, what, what were you experiencing at that time?
Donna: I was just For no reason, numbness in my feet and in my fingers. And I, as it progressed, I kept dropping things, and I would stand up and become dizzy. And we all know that if we stand up too quickly, it can make us dizzy, but. It doesn't matter what, no matter with me as it was quickly or slowly. And at some point, my husband had to literally push me out of bed because I couldn't move.
I would get a headache, my double visions, and my sense of smell changed acutely was either I could not smell. And then another day. Everything nauseated me. Then they smell nice here. I didn't mean my eyes; my appetite drastically change in which I didn't eat a lot at all. And I love food, and that turned me off the just general achiness and my, my headache.
I constantly got migraine headaches. They slid out of my words. I could remember. The day, the last day I worked, and this was ten years ago, and I wish I had a client. I a very effective job. And I was called a client service that then I was visiting a client, and we were talking and all of a sudden my tongue would not move.
And it was so I can remember thinking this is embarrassing. Not thinking where it's something that, which mom with me health-wise, but when I'm on video, that's this point. So I looked at her, thank goodness. She would have seen the front of mine, as well as the client. I looked at her, and I guess I had panic in my eyes and three really concerned.
And so it seemed like it lasted forever, but I'm sure it was less than a minute. And I tried to function my tongue. I tried to get worse to come out of nine. Now I tried to fall on your leg was, and anything I could do, but I could not. So eventually everything loosened up my tongue loosen up, and I turned to her and told us that I need to go.
I'm so sorry. I need to cut this short. And I immediately drove home. And that next day I have a doctor's appointment. I told him what happened. He did an MRI and tried the lesions on my brain. And he recommended to me. He called it. He called in a neurologist. He, it went up, and that'd be one of the top ones here in this part of this, the country.
And he agreed to see me. And that's when the lumbar punchy with Don. And that's not what happened. That's my story. So it was the motion does and thing Elva and think, okay, this is it because I would have worked hard and I've worked since I was ten years old. So, this was extremely devastating to me, very depressing I would cry every day.
I mean, I could not get ahold of my emotions. That was another side effect. And so those are the things that I had to deal with. I went to the Mayo clinic. You've heard of them, Minnesota. I went through this stage with my husband for a week and a half, and they also told me I have fibromyalgia. That was the first time it was diagnosed as fibromyalgia in conjunction with them.
They could never find out anything. Concrete about, well, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. And so, but that's the stood everybody's different with math. So, unfortunately, they could not tell me anything different. So I came back home, my husband and I, and we were just exhausted. We used to give up, we've had to find something we knew there was something out there that could help.
And lo and behold, this plan of my husband friend, who happens to live in Colorado, his wife has lupus. She was sent home, and she was bedridden, and they've heard about, and so she started taking it two weeks later. She was hiking. They gave her a death sentence. Two weeks later, with LDN, she was hiking in the mountains with her husband.
He called my friend, and he said, bonnet need to try this and see what happens. And I didn't Diana, I research so much, and I found it was able to do the research. And then what happened is that. At that point, I said, okay, let me try it. And I thought it was going to be something that was very simple to do, but I couldn't find a doctor who would prescribe it.
No doctor knew about LDN, and I thought, are you kidding? So I ended up having to go to a doctor that was close to Chicago, and that's about five hours away from where I live. So initially he's prescribed it over the phone, and he said, let me see everything that you have. And I did that. And lo and behold, he did prescribe it's for my insurance company, witnessed it.
So, but $30 was a nominal fee for me. So. I said, why not? I can tell you within two days I felt that definitely in my entire body, the way I was thinking, the way my limbs were working, the way I walk because my game was easy. I could fall. If someone blew on me. Okay. And so I was very active on the phone.
That's how I discovered LDN. And I used it. But to me, he is, and after three years, because I was shooting myself for ten years, what did nothing for me every single day. The quality of my life is going down, and with LDN, it was nothing but up with my quality of life, just shot through the roof and I'm thinking, you gotta be kidding me.
How can this miracle pill help me This quickly, and this much didn't drastically change my life, that too near Norman, Steve, that I am used to. So, my husband, I didn't want him to. We told everyone we could, he's heard about it. All the, you heard about this and. Yeah, she had problems with, um, for non they were heightening or if I can't forgive me again, I cannot remember what a prominent disease is.
And they said to her to death in six months. They said she would be dead. And I just so happened to she's a bed and breakfast owner with my husband and my husband. And I didn't go there. Awesome. And we've stayed ahead of that bed in park. And when she told us about what she was going through, and we just exchange voice, and I said, you need to try on the end.
And she wasn't resistant for almost a year, but I kept corresponding with her. You need to try this. You really do need to try this. So eventually she found a doctor, and she started it. She had told me on LDN, and her name is Lori Dawn. And she's on the LDN for him as well. She told me the second night, after 30 years of being in pain, she woke up one morning.
There was no pain in her fingers. And they wish because of the LDN right now. So doctors have no idea how she is living and functioning, and she's wonderful. Well, I can't say enough about it. I, I, I don't know what else to say.
Linda Elsegood: Well, that's an amazing story. If you had to have rated your quality of
life on a score of one to 10 before you started LDN and ten being the best, what would it have been?
Donna: Oh, it's the lowest point. I mean the, before LDN, I was below a one with the idea IDN, I would say I can go from eight and a half to over 10.
Seriously. Wow. And it depends upon because I'm going through menopause right now. That's not too much information. And so my body goes up and down with that. If anybody out there knows about it, menopause, of course, we, most women do who is this age group, and it's sometimes, you know, just flushed it, but it's been more upward now with, and I thought out too, no complaints whatsoever.
And people look at me, you know, in us as I often did use. And it's. Also, you don't look sick type of statement. Well, as you're feeling miserable on the inside and your food and all of the time, 24 seven, I don't have that anymore inside of me every now and then other twins, but there's nothing to write home about it.
Nothing to complain about. I keep my doctor's appointment to most straighten that I'm addictive, how I'm doing. But other than that, am I new biologist? See the change, but still, to describe LDN, he wouldn't do it. He has one other patient besides myself who is on LDN. Now I, after three years, let's see, I would say about two and a half years ago, I stopped taking LDN, and I see a wonderful.
And I still, I just, I'm still on LDN, but I take no medication at this point in my life. And I was diagnosed, uh, on, uh, the last 20 minutes. So, um, I'm good. My doctors are astonished. You should be on a wheelchair by now. I'm not in a wheelchair. I can walk. I wear me still at hours. Sometimes I trip, but that's okay.
But, but I can't say enough about that's it that's a miracle drug this in college. Uh, my face had been asked to do this, so, I mean, it has increased my faith in my Lord and then increase my face and us, there is something out there, but. Autoimmune diseases for cancers for those type of things. I mean, suddenly I could drive.
Linda Elsegood: before we started talking, you told me about exercising. Would you like to tell everybody what exercises you've been doing?
Donna: Well, I use the leprechaun daily. And each day I do that with emails, and that takes about an hour. I don't push myself too high. I do a little weight lifting, not a whole lot. We wished I had 10 pounds.
I do. A lot of stuff is very important that keeps your tendons doable so that you. Won't hope. And your elbow is a bin. When you want them to bend your knees a bit when you want them to be on. I used to have terrible, terrible pains in my leg, which only casting with FIC. I don't have that anymore. So if the, you know, you keep your stuff, you are yoga.
He left the walk-in. And if you can learn, it's very important. It's important for your state of mind. It's also important to keep your body in as much shape as you can because your body will fight for you. If you fight for it, that's the only way you can beat this thing. And do you, and of course, That's the first and foremost, the number one thing I would, I would tell everyone in the distance, you have to believe in something.
If you don't, you're doomed, because if you don't believe that you can do this, if you're not telling your body, you can do this and keep a positive attitude, you've already defeated, just and used to come to this.
So that does not answer your question.
Linda Elsegood: Thank you very much for sharing your experience with us. We do appreciate it. And I'm so pleased that LDN has worked so well for you.
Any questions or comments you may have, please Contact Us. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for joining us today. We really appreciated your company. Until next time, stay safe and keep well.
