> Gordon Hesketh wrote:
> 
> The following excerpt is from a lady named, Betty Iams who publishes a
> newsletter about MS.  We would add that Karan had a serious episode of
> Candida after a 3-day IV steroid treatment prescribed by her neuro.  We
> learned big-time from THAT mistake!!!
> 
> ------------------------------
> This past week I got so angry when I read on the Internet about a
> neurologist at a major research center who is recommending that
> IV steroids
> be used to "help rebuild myelin," that I decided to share with you why I
> have never considered using steroids or the ABC drugs
> and have such disdain
> for them.  I posted the following story in one of
> the large MS newsgroups
> recently and was overwhelmed with positive responses:
> 
> Once upon a time there was a beautiful, vibrant, healthy, active
> 34-year-old mother of three ...
> 
> ...clip...
> 
> A couple of years later she began to develop numbness in
> various areas on
> the left side of her body, and almost completely lost
> the sight of one eye
> with optic neuritis.  After a spinal tap she was told she had MS and she
> was given oral prednisone.   She took up golf and became quite a good
> golfer, and went into remission.
> This remission lasted a few years, during
> which time we thought there had been a mistake in the MS diagnosis.
> 
> By now my youngest brother was about 10 or 11 years old.
> Mother then had
> her worst exacerbation.  She was hospitalized and given
> a 4-day IV of ACTH.
> She never recovered from the damage of that exacerbation, and it wasn't
> very long before she graduated from cane to walker to wheelchair.
> Over the
> next couple of years, about 3 or 4 times she was hospitalized
> and given the
> 4-day IV of ACTH again.  It made no logical sense because
> after the first
> time it never made her any better, I was
> to learn later.  (I lived a long plane ride away at that time.)
> 
> Mother began to suffer terribly with back pain.  She had surgery on her
> back, and it was discovered that her spine was so porous
> nothing much could
> be done for her.  Then one evening, transferring from her
> wheelchair to the
> bed, she broke a leg in two places, without even falling.
> At that point my
> father called me and I came to help.  She had to be placed in
> the first of
> many nursing homes until the broken bones mended, and at that time I
> learned she had no bone density.   The ACTH had destroyed her bones.
> She had sustained other damage from the ACTH as well.
> 
> Over the next several years she was in and out of hospitals and nursing
> homes several times, always due to broken bones, and finally
> the last straw
> came when she broke her pelvis in several places.  Mother is now 80
> years old.  She has been confined to a nursing home, unable to do
> anything for
> herself for the last 13 years.  She cannot read, nor even sign her name.
> She has been catheterized for about 15 years .... you get the picture.
> 
> Mother also had many other effects from the steroids - she became
> moonfaced, and had drastic personality changes (frankly, we could hardly
> stand to be around her at that time because she was so hateful to
> everyone).   I realize now that she was psychotic (a not uncommon side
> effect).  There were many very difficult years for my father and I lived
> too far away to be of help.
> 
> It is my opinion that mother is where she is today,
> not necessarily because
> of MS, but because of steroid treatment. This is not just my opinion,
> but the opinion of several of her doctors in recent years.
> When I read in the
> newsgroup that people are still being given IV steroids
> I shudder and want
> to scream at the computer screen.  Wake up people!!  Steroids are not a
> magic bullet.
> 
> Now you know why I am so militant against steroid "treatment" for MS.  I
> believe it is barbaric, and should be outlawed.  I have since
> had several
> neurologists tell me that what steroids do is give you
> a false feeling of
> security....a temporary reprise, for which you pay big time
> down the road.
> Is it any wonder that I have chosen to never take steroids for anything.
> 
> I hope that this story just might help someone avoid becoming like my
> mother, and if mother were capable of talking to all of you, she would
> plead with you to please listen to her story and learn from it.  Mother
> comes from an era when allopathic physicians were revered, and it never
> occurred to anyone to question what they prescribed.  I think of how
> different mother's life could have been if her neurologist would
> have told
> her about the role of diet, nutritional products, exercise and lifestyle
> changes in MS.  Even then there was a significant amount of
> research data
> pointing to the role diet plays, but the advent of the steroid drugs, so
> highly touted by the pharmaceutical companies, meant they were
> automatically the treatment of choice.  No consideration was given to
> the horrendous side effects, both short range and long range.
> 
> ...clip...