After seeing others struggle with the disease, Katie admits she didn't initially handle her diagnosis well. "My response was, 'No, no, no. I don't have MS. My mother has MS,'" she said. "I realized I was talking to somebody in a completely different state who has never met my mother. I thought to myself, How would he know? Why would he care [about my mom's diagnosis?] I was like, 'No, I don't have MS.'"
Once the doctor ran through a laundry list of questions — asking whether or not she'd ever had a myriad of rare illnesses like leukemia or syphilis — he encouraged Katie to face the music. "He literally said, 'Well, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I'm going to say it's probably a duck. Go see a neurologist.'"
A year and a half later, she was officially diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The next step was figuring out how to manage her disease while being able to care for her family. Although Katie was urged by a second neurologist to enter a clinical trial for a medication, she was skeptical. After all, she had seen how debilitating some of the side effects of MS medications could be.
"I watched my mom and my friend's mom go through their medications," she said. "There are side effects and some of them are really ugly." Rather than committing to medication, Katie opted to ride her symptoms out for the time being without a specific treatment plan.
"Many people — including doctors — were strongly against my decision," explained Katie. "They said I needed to start medication early and that I needed to treat it. I totally understand if that's what what other people want to do! But personally, I felt that given the way my disease was [progressing], the side effects weren't worth the risk at the moment."
Image Source: Katie Merrick