Posted by: The Sumaira Foundation in MOG, NMO, Professionnels de santé, Voices of NMO
I was a young resident at the University of Verona’s, Neurology Unit when I met a woman with rapidly evolving extensive myelitis. I first thought about NMOSD and asked our laboratory to analyse her serum for anti-AQP4. I performed the spinal tap and asked for an infectious and autoimmune screening, but the analyses were within […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in NMO, Patient.e
On April 29, 1984, I landed at Boston’s Logan Airport with two suitcases and a seven-year-old girl holding my hand. This trip concluded a process that had begun three years before when my sister, who lived with her husband and her daughters in Massachusetts, asked me if I wanted to immigrate to the United States. […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in MOG, NMO, Professionnels de santé, Voices of NMO
It was over a decade ago, but I remember it like yesterday, the first patient I looked after with NMOSD. Actually, there were two of them in the same neuroimmunology clinic. Both patients had a profound effect on me and have continued to influence other decisions I have made in my career since that time. […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in NMO, Patient.e, Voices of NMO
I was born and raised in Cuba where I played outside, ran, and enjoyed time with my friends. In my healthy teen years, I didn’t think I’d ever become chronically sick, much less, stop walking. I remember watching a movie about a boy named Lorenzo who suffered from a degenerative neurological disease that causes paralysis. […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in MOG, Patient.e, Voices of NMO
Every day we wake up, we surely never expect our day to end with everything turned upside down – and our life changed forever. But it is exactly what happened to me in 2013 after being diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that could likely leave me blind, paralyzed, or worse… “You have ten years,” the […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in NMO, Patient.e, Voices of NMO
While I was pregnant, I began having blurred vision. I went to see ophthalmologists, opticians, and general practitioners, but they kept saying nothing was wrong. I was sent to see a neurologist at a public hospital, but there were long wait times. Knowing I needed answers, I chose to go to a private hospital. The […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in NMO, Patient.e, Voices of NMO
Hi, my name is Noelani. I am 30 years old, was born and raised in Hawaii but currently reside in Nevada! Looking back, there were signs throughout my childhood of NMO, bowel/urinary incontinence, spurts of tingles, and needles in my extremities. In my early teens, I had episodes of numbness in my left arm and […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in NMO, Voices of NMO
It started innocuously. In 2008 we moved to Ottawa with my employer for my career in pest control. On a gray, cloudy but humid day, I was out removing a wasp nest for a client. She pointed to the nest hanging off a tree branch, about 10 feet away, and I thought to myself, “not […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in NMO, Patient.e, Voices of NMO
In August 2019, while at work, I began to notice a change in my right eye. I thought it was the contacts I was wearing, so I removed them. Still, my vision felt strange. I realized that I was going blind and needed to go to an eye doctor. The eye doctor mentioned multiple sclerosis […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in MOG, Patient.e, Voices of NMO
It all began with a tremor. It was September 2018, and I was off on maternity leave after having my second daughter earlier that year. As nice as that should have been, I was probably at one of the lowest points in my life. I’d been diagnosed with post-natal depression a few months earlier. In […]
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