International Women’s Day #RefocustheResearch
Today on International Women’s Day, I #ChooseToChallenge and am taking a stand for women and women’s health. The Alberta Women’s Health Foundation has been created to fill urgent gaps in women’s health research, an area historically underfunded and sometimes nonexistent. Excellent health outcomes are the direct result of ongoing investment in health research. Women’s health research is historically underfunded or nonexistent, with most research efforts using men as a standard and applying findings to women. But women are not just “smaller men”, and this can lead to deadly consequences – for example, heart attacks can present differently in women than men, causing many women to be sent home with “anxiety” when they are really suffering a potentially deadly health event.
Less than 8% of Canadian health research funding is dedicated to women’s health. The Lois Hole Hospital for Women is Alberta's only dedicated women's hospital. I know this as I have spent time there, and probably will in the future. I also have MS. MS is a disease that predominantly effects women. Women are 3x as likely to be diagnosed with MS and we still don’t know why.
There is so much we still don’t understand about MS, research is the only way that we can continue to truly understand more. Maybe then the often invisible symptoms of MS will at least be understood. Until then I am bringing those inside symptoms out in an effort to raise awareness. The 3 symptoms that happen inside that I am bringing out are brain fog, Lhermitte’s sign and blindness.
Brain fog, the fog rolls in, it can hit at any time and boom, you lose focus, you forget what your doing, forget words. It’s exhausting, it can be dangerous. Like driving through the thickest fog at night, trying desperately to see what’s right in front of you. Usually you decide to slow down, or pull over, but instead of the car, it’s your body and you often have no choice.
No one could see from looking at me that there was anything wrong with me, but I knew, my eye hurt, a lot and I was so afraid. I showed up to an emergency room, dressed up all pretty for what was supposed to be a night out and told the nurses and doctors I am blind in one eye. Well let me tell you, not until someone shines a flashlight in your eye do they believe you really can’t see. No one can see that you can’t see. I have never felt more uncomfortable being around people. No matter how much makeup I put on, I somehow felt like I couldn’t hide I was blind.
Lhermitte's sign is a sudden, brief, sensation like an electric shock that moves down your neck into your spine. The perfect storm. The neck pain may move into your arms and legs and sometimes to your fingers and toes. It is usually triggered by bending your neck so that your head moves down with your chin moving towards your chest. It can range from uncomfortable to unbearable pain.
