The Month My Body Decided to "Fight the Man" (Spoiler: I'm the Man)

Okay. Story time. Buckle up, because this one's not funny-funny — it's the kind of funny that happens when you've cried enough and now you're just tired and a little punchy about it.

On April 28th, I had my first infusion of Briumvi — a six-hour IV treatment for MS. Part two came on May 12th. And for about three days after that part 2, something wild happened: I felt like a person I used to know. My old normal. The numbness backed off. I could move. I was doing physical therapy at least once a week by that point and actually keeping up with it. I remember thinking, *oh. Oh, this is what it's supposed to feel like.*

That lasted about three days.

Then, week by week, things started sliding sideways. Not back to baseline — past it, into new territory. New flare-ups I hadn't met before, like they'd been waiting backstage for their cue.

Here's the highlight reel, if you can call it that:

• A spasm that starts in my back and radiates outward, shocking my whole body on its way through, hard enough that I jerk in response. Involuntarily. Like my body's hitting its own panic button.

• Pins and needles in my feet and hands so intense that *any* movement feels like getting shocked.

• A heat that starts somewhere in my core and spreads until I feel like I'm on fire from the inside.

• Spasms in my legs and arms, just for variety.

• The loss of my left peripheral vision — which means I have to turn my whole head to see anything on that side, and in the meantime I'm bumping into every doorframe, chair, and unsuspecting piece of furniture in my path.

• And of course, the classic: numbness so complete that walking starts to feel like a theoretical concept rather than something my legs actually know how to do.

So I did what you do. I called my team. I chased answers. New MRI, new bloodwork.

The MRI showed a new lesion — small, but new. Fine. Annoying, but fine, I've met lesions before.

Then came the bloodwork. And the bloodwork had a surprise for me: **neutropenia**.

For anyone who hasn't had the pleasure — neutropenia means your levels of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, drop low. Neutrophils are supposed to be your first responders against infection. Without enough of them, something as small as a cold can turn into something serious, fast. This is the kind of thing you usually hear about with chemo or radiation patients. Turns out it also happens in about 15% of people on IV therapy for MS. Lucky me, apparently I contain multitudes.

Here's the part that made me laugh — the bad kind of laugh, the kind where you're not sure if you're going to cry instead. The infusion was *supposed* to just reduce and remove my B cells. Targeted. Precise. A scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

My body said: no. We're taking down the whole system.

Which — look, if we were talking about a corrupt government, or "fighting the man," or overthrowing some oppressive regime, I would be *fully* on board. Storm the gates. Eat the rich. All of it. But this isn't a metaphor. This is my own immune system, and a small infection right now could turn septic fast. The flu could actually kill me. There is no version of "fight the man" that sounds good when I *am* the man, and the man just got disarmed.

So here we are. More testing. Staying as safe as I can. Virtual check-ins with my doctors because apparently I'm now the kind of stuck where they can't move forward with the IV therapy — not on an immune system that's barely showing up to work. Instead, it's harder meds to manage the flare-ups in the meantime, and a holding pattern until my immune system comes back online enough to try a different medication — one aimed at actually managing the B cells that are the real problem, instead of just nuking everything and hoping for the best.

Four months in. Four months that feel like twenty years. And I get it now — I really get why depression rates are so high in the MS community. Nobody tells you that the hardest part isn't always the symptoms. Sometimes it's the waiting. The being stuck between "the last thing didn't work right" and "we're not sure what's next yet, till you recover."

So thank you for reading my boo-hoo for the month. I don't have a tidy bow to put on this one. I don't have the "and then everything got better" ending yet. What I have is: I'm still here, I'm still asking questions, and I'm hoping the next few weeks bring better news.

I really hope so.

— More soon. There's always more soon.