I had my daughter in July of 2011, in November I noticed when at a stop sign when I darted my eyes left to right to look for cars I was having pain in my eyeballs literally. If felt like the were being pulled from their sockets. I summed it up to having 3 young children. When it started to bother me, and since I was on maternity leave I thought what the heck lets go get an eye exam. The provider that did the eye exam I still wonder what he saw to this day. I remember being told to set up an appointment with my primary asap and that if I had a headache to go to the ER. I remember crying in the waiting room thinking something is going wrong. That night I had the worst headache, that I slept with a heating pad on my head. I did not go to the ER. I woke up and everything was cloudy. My ex took me to the clinic I worked at and my provider saw me, (perks of working with providers) one look at me and I could sense something was way off.  I wasn’t looking at where he was trying to have me look, he sent me to the hospital and then started a referral to see  Neurologist.  The hospital put me on steroids and I didn’t sleep all night as I was afraid I would awake blind and never see my children’s face. After a couple of days at the hospital I was released and given steriods to taper off of. As soon as I finished the steroids’ and the medicine was out of my system I went completely blind in my left eye. With 3 young kids 10 and under I was told by a nurse to just drive to UCSF and walk in to their ER. I did just that, packed up our SUV with kids, clothes, etc. Walked into the ER and lied about being on a trip to San Francisco and waking up blind. I did get seen but you could tell nobody knew what was wrong with me. I had resident students coming at me with pens to get close to my eye to see if I would blink. Thankfully that night my Neurologist came to the hospital and started seeing me. He did a plasma transfusion on me and diagnosed me with NMO. I left the clinic with most of my sight back.   The years after this I have luckily not had a relapse, just major major mid back spasms that stop me in my tracks. I hate them. I remind myself I am lucky to be doing well, but today is a bad day for me, so I am having  lil pity party for myself today. I wish I could find a group where I could talk to other patients more regularly about life with NMO.