Hi, my name is Mike and I'm a Myasthenic.

My story begins on the couch of all places.  I was enjoying a nice afternoon nap on the couch one lazy day and when I awoke I noticed that the cat I had laying between my feet had suddenly developed a twin.  I blinked my eyes a few times and just wrote it off as having tired eyes.  Over the course of the next few weeks however it only got worse.

I started to notice while I was at work that I was getting frequent headaches that were all centered on my eyes.  I also noticed that I was seeing double a lot more often and just blinking wasn't always taking care of the problem.  I had taken up finding dark corners where the lights weren't so bright and shutting my eyes when I could to give them a break, but it only got worse.

I finally decided it was time to have my eyes checked so I made an appointment with an optomotrist who spent 5 minutes with me and perscribed prisms for my glasses.  $500 dollars later I could see again, somewhat.  Sadly this remedy only worked for about a week and only made the headaches worse in the  long run.  In desperation mostly out of hearing my wife nag me to see a doctor, and the undenible fact that I was, for all intense and purposes completely blind, I thumbed through the yellow pages and found an opthomologist; big difference as I would soon find out.

I asked when I could get an appointment and they told me it would be a month or more.  I begged them for something sooner and the very nice receptionist took down my list of symptoms then placed me on hold.  After a VERY short stint listening to elevator music she asked how soon I could get there.  Thirty minutes later I was in the lobby.

I checked in and was quickly escorted back to the exam room where I met the Dr.  He was very polite and performed a few tests on my eyes and did the obligitory Dr. Hmmmmms.  After a few of these he askes his assistant to bring my wife into the room.  At this point I started to sweat. 

The good Dr. told me he had it narrowed down to 3 possibilities, a brain tumor, Multiple Sclerosis, or another disease he didn't name but said was treatable.  We all held our breath and hoped for number 3.  He had me set up an appointment at the local ER for a tensilon test to check for disease number 3, which I quickly made. 

A few days later I was in the ER signing a waiver stating that I understood the risks of the drug the doctor was about to administer to me.  More sweating at this point.  The Dr. went over what should happen if it turned out to be a disease called Myasthenia Gravis.  He said if it was MG, my eyes should return to their normal state within just a few seconds.

The Dr. then injected me with the Tensilon and I swear I actually heard a chior somewhere singing Halleluja!  My eyes went back into alignment and I could see!  He performed some basic tests on my eyes to check their tracking and so on and they stayed together just fine.  Sadly though, after about 5 minutes I was back to being essentially blind as I couldn't open my eyes very far and when they were open my left eye was hanging out somewhere in the neighborhood of Saturn.

The Dr prescribed Mestinon and almost immediatly things got better.  He discussed other options such as prednisone which I fought tooth and nail against and just stuck with the Mestinon.  Sadly however, within a few months the disease progressed and generalized throughout my body and I was forced to seek out the MDA who got me in touch with a wonderful neurologist by the name of Dr. Paul Later of Ft. Wayne Neurology.

To make a long story short, in September 2007 I had a thymectomy and have been living relitively symptom free since.  I still get it in my eyes occasionally, and if I REALLY over do it I can feel it in other parts of my body but for the most part I'm in remission.