How I've dealt with Multiple Sclerosis

I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis on July 31, 1991. For the first couple of years, my symptoms were mild enough that they really didn't affect my life. Slowly but surely though my symptoms were increasing in severity. I was lucky enough to be employed by the State of Texas so I had great health benefits and they truly followed the doctrine of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Our primary physician,who was a DO, encouraged us early on to look into complementary methods of dealing with symptoms.

A couple of my co-workers were going to massage school and would practice on me during lunch. It was in my legs that I really started to feel and others could see a difference. Sometimes I felt like the tin man who'd been oiled. Bruce knew that as time progressed, I would become more dependent on him. He figured that the best answer would be to go into business for himself. He quit a very good job managing a medical warehouse and took a much lower paying state job that would allow him to also attend massage school. Once he finished massage school, he worked both jobs until he was making more money doing massages than the state was paying him. He went into massage full-time on 4-12-97.

I was still working but had to carry a separate bag to hold all of my medications. There were days I would start feeling so weird that I would make a list of everything I had taken and put my Dr.'s name and phone number on it and make sure than someone knew where it was just in case something happened. By this time, I was having to get frequent tests in order to make sure all the drugs weren't harming my internal organs, It seemed the one they were most concerned with was my liver. (Essential oils are absorbed through the skin.) This was due to the fact that all the drugs had to be processed through my liver. Bruce and I had to sit back and make a decision. I could live without the use of my legs, but I couldn't live without a liver and we SURE COULDN'T AFFORD TO BUY ONE.

Bruce had already started his advanced studies in myofascial release and aromatherapy. Over the next couple of years we worked on figuring out which combinations of oils handled my individual symptoms the best. By this time he had added regular clients who were suffering from fibromyalgia, chronic pain, sports injuries, post traumatic injuries, arthritis, insomnia, lupus and other individuals with MS. His knowledge on the use of essential oils for symptom relief was ever increasing.

My office mate suffered from severe arthritis. Bruce had mixed me up a "chill" cream for when things started getting to me emotionally. One day our boss was driving my office mate nuts and she asked to use some cream. She rubbed it into her hands. About 15-20 minutes later she approached my desk inquiring what was in that jar. I asked why and she showed her hands to me. She had flexibility like I had never seen and she said most of the pain was gone. She went all over our floor and told everyone that she knew who suffered from arthritis that they needed to drop by my desk and try out this lotion. From that point on, I needed a bigger jar so people could "borrow my magic cream". Now a lot of times, especially with alternative "medicine" people think it will work and it does. (The placebo reaction in reverse). Gloria had no idea that this cream could help her hands so that theory was blown out of the water.

Sometimes, when his clients were going out of town, or we would be going away for him to receive additional training, they would request that he mix them up some lotion they could use on themselves until everyone got back to town. THAT is how this business started. By the way, using massage and essential oils allowed me to continue working until late 1999. I still take very few drugs. The only ones I take are for symptoms we have yet to figure out how to get oils to alleviate. But the quest continues!

As for how the lotions have helped me, here it goes. Do you MSers know what I'm talking about when I say my boa constrictor? You know when your trunk muscles get so tight around your ribs that you think they're gonna break? That's my boa constrictor! The Tranquility cream will get rid of that joker. It may take a few applications, but it will leave.

Do you know that feeling when it seems the whole world is closing in on you and you just want to scream? Tranquility, the anti-anxiety cream fixes that for me. I rub it in at my temples and the thinner skinned areas on the underside of my arms. Its my "chill pill" in a jar.

The stress relief lotion helps when your feet feel like they're in a bed of hot coals.

I personally don't have trouble sleeping but have friends with MS who do. They swear by the Dream Cream.

I'm always here to answer questions or help in any way possible.