Five Months Post Infusion

I went in today to get another MRI, as well as blood and urine tests before my next infusion.  While I was at the office, I also needed to sign a new consent form for the CHORDS study, as they've made some minor changes. My next infusion is January 9th, and I'm excited to continue on the study, but am somewhat skeptical at this point on how effective it is for me personally. I have had a rough month or two, and my conditions seem to be deteriorating. My overall symptoms have gotten worse, but I remain optimistic that this drug will do what it's supposed to do in the long run. I was in South Carolina with family over the holidays, so the change in weather was great. Now, I'm back in Wisconsin and had a challenging MS day today. Good news is that I have a 3 day weekend coming up to relax and watch some football.

So, I found out today that roughly 294 out of the 600 participants in the CHORDS trial have already received the drug. Apparently, there was a high number of people getting declined for the study, so they have loosened the requirements to get into the trial. Nothing changes for me regarding the study and how I get the drug, but new people into the study will not have as much difficulty. From my understanding, they will not do as many blood tests, and/or make some modifications to the ones they do do. They have also changed their stance on reproduction for men, as they were pretty clear that you were not to try for kids while on this drug. This has changed for Men, and they only ask now that if you do try and get pregnant with your partner, that they are notified and have a chance to monitor that.

On a side note, the WalkAide device that I was using stopped working about 2 weeks into testing it. Not sure if going to a different part of the country affected that, but I wasn't able to get a full month of usage, and am not sure if I'll try to buy one. I did see that people are selling used units online, and this may be a more economical way to get one.