Posted by: The Sumaira Foundation in NMO, Patient.e, Voices of NMO
Freshman year of college is a time to form your sense of identity, but when I started school, I thought that forming this ‘new’ me meant dying my hair blue, not being diagnosed with neuromyelitis optica… On the night of September 27, 2017, I stayed up all night in my small dorm room coughing, with […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in MOG, NMO, Professionnels de santé, TM, Voices of NMO
Maureen is a nurse. She worked in neurocritical care at Johns Hopkins Hospital for many years before she had ever heard of NMO. But in 2007, shortly after Dr. Benjamin Greenberg joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins, he recruited her to work with him in neuroimmunology. It was there that she first came into contact […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in NMO, ON, Patient.e, TM, Voices of NMO
It started with a never-ending headache… Click the image below to watch Chasity’s video in which she describes her experience with optic neuritis. Although she has lost a significant amount of vision, Chasity believes that everything happens for a reason and is grateful to still be able to see her children every day through her […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in NMO, Patient.e, Voices of NMO
My name is Letitia and I am a 22-year-old South African NMO patient. My story began on the 26th of December 2017, Boxing Day… I had been suffering with an excruciating headache for the last 2 days. I eventually noticed that I also had trouble with my peripheral vision. After some online research, I came […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in Proche-aidant.e, TM, Voices of NMO
Addison “Addie” Havens was a healthy two year-old little girl full of energy and spunk who loved to play with her big brother… The weekend of January 29, 2016 began like any other but shortly after, Addie came down with a fever. We monitored it and were able to keep the fever down with Tylenol. […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in MOG, ON, Proche-aidant.e, Voices of NMO
Virginia was only 10 when, while checking the mail one day in April, she noticed a grayness in her vision, “like leaves creeping up from the bottom of my eye.” The strange phenomenon went away in a few minutes. Her mother, Kimberlie, attributed the problem to Virginia’s allergies. But when the vision problem returned, they […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in NMO, Patient.e, TM, Voices of NMO
I was 33 years old in 1993, when I experienced a sudden attack of optic neuritis, an inflammation that damages the optic nerve causing vision loss. A small black dot, obstructing the vision in my left eye turned into complete blindness in that eye in a matter of days. While admitted to Upstate University Hospital […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in MOG, ON, Voices of NMO
It was the late 1990’s. I was in my 30’s had constant pain down my left arm, and even though I couldn’t tie the symptoms down to any single event, my orthopedic surgeon had me on the surgery schedule assuming I needed a spinal fusion to fix a slipped disc. Then my MRI results came […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in NMO, ON, Patient.e, TM, Voices of NMO
I have a rare, chronic neurological disease that affects my central nervous system. It’s caused me to become temporarily half-blind and feel throbbing pain everywhere… I was diagnosed with Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) also known as Devic’s disease (similar to MS) last month after my MRI scans showed optic neuritis and brain lesions — and it’s completely shattered […]
Read MorePosted by: The Sumaira Foundation in NMO, Patient.e, Voices of NMO
Imagine this: You’re driving on a highway, and suddenly, your hands stop working completely. You can’t grip the wheel. Imagine the terror and the confusion… And then imagine, that, thank goodness, your husband is in the car with you and takes over driving before you get into an accident. You assume something crazy happened and […]
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