"You Have... Oh Wait, We Still Don't Know"

Disappointment. I think that's what I'm feeling. Numb as well. Let's throw in discouraged for good measure. Yesterday's appointment with my neuropthamologist should have been more enlightening. After scheduling my follow up appointment for three months down the road, the purpose of which is only to monitor my visual status, I left feeling like I'd been set adrift to fend for myself. There was no longer any urgency to discovering the cause of my issues and there's nothing anyone could do to improve my situation.

The MRI performed on Monday revealed that there is indeed some white matter present on my optic nerves as well as other parts of my brain. Not enough to completely confirm MS, but enough to raise suspicions that something is amiss. What though? With the decreased likelihood of a virus being the cause of my troubles, they're now focusing on autoimmune diseases. MS hasn't been ruled out, but Devic's disease has now been thrown into the ring as well as "some other rare autoimmune disease". Some other? Isn't there a simple test to determine what's happening?

So, now I wait to hear when my appointment at the MS clinic will be. Apparently, that's where I'll find out the extent of the nerve damage to my reflexes and hopefully point us in the direction of determining which autoimmune disease it is that I have.

Is there any good news? Yes, there must always be a little good news. Right?

My colour vision has improved. Not back to what it should be, but it's not terrible either. Just don't ask me to determine the difference between pink and lilac. I can't see them. They're grey. But yellow, red, blue, green, orange (sort of) are back in strange and bizarre ways. They all look a little "off", but at least I can see things in more than various shades of oatmeal.

I have also had a significant improvement in seeing things that are in close proximity to me. Paperwork, books, food on the cutting board, my ukulele - all these things are quite clear. The white still creeps in a bit in its effort to overtake dark letters when reading, but I can read without too much difficulty.

The news relating to my long distance vision isn't so rosy though. It has worsened since last week. Damn. I was feeling quite positive about going through the eye chart and was quite deflated when I couldn't make out the next row of letters; a row that I had been able to see with a little difficulty last week. Yesterday, I questioned whether there were letters actually there or not. I couldn't even see the shape of them.