I had my yearly MRI in early December, but in all the hubbub surrounding the holidays and the excitement over my Ph.D. position, I’d all but forgotten about it until I got a letter a couple of weeks ago calling me to an appointment with the neurologist on January 19. I went down to Umeå on that date, this past Monday, and had a little check-up and got the MRI results. As usual, I was a little apprehensive beforehand but, once again, all was well.

Though the doctor told me that he “didn’t completely trust” the reading he had, as it was done by a regular radiology doctor and not an MS expert, he did report that there appeared to be no new MS activity. That makes two years with no progression, and only one new lesion and another that had increased slightly in size in the past five-and-a-half years. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

He did say that he’s going to have an MS doctor read the results, just to be sure, but I really don’t expect there to be anything (or if there is, for it not to be much). I know that he’d like me to be on medication, but he knows equally well that I’m not interested at the moment, so we avoided much discussion about that. The whole appointment took less than twenty minutes, which made the two-hours-each-way bus ride feel a bit excessive, but I can hardly complain about not needing to take up more of the doctor’s time.