When and how did this all start?

We began noticing that something was up around the time we returned to Washington for training after our posting to Yekaterinburg, Russia in March of 2010. I felt exhausted and could never catch up and feel rested. Given the circumstances - a mid-winter move from the edge of Siberia to a demanding training schedule at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Arlington - it didn't seem too unusual and we just plowed ahead.

In June of 2010, we left D.C. to drive cross-country for our home leave in San Francisco. Near the end our home leave in late July, I had the first "event" that was very unusual. In quick succession, I had a series of symptoms - first weakness in my legs, then prisms appeared in my peripheral vision, next came extreme light sensitivity, then double vision which eventually gave way to a splitting headache. The acute phase lasted about an hour and a half though I felt hungover from it for the next twenty-four hours.

Quite dramatic and frightening but after doing some reading and talking to friends and family, it seemed like I might have experienced a migraine headache. I had another, shorter episode about ten days later and I resolved to see a doctor once we reached our new assignment in Canberra, Australia.

We landed in Canberra at the beginning of August and threw ourselves into setting up our lives there. Again, I didn't feel quite like myself, I felt tired and I was aware of a change in my body but I was well enough to function and keep up a full schedule. I finally got around to seeing a doctor in mid-September. Based on my symptoms, he also thought I was experiencing migraines and prescribed me a medication to lessen the severity if I had another one. As a precaution, he also recommended that I have a blood work up and get an MRI when things settled down.

A few days later, I had my worst episode to date. The Ambassador was delivering the keynote address to a New Media conference, I had worked hard contributing to the speech, and I very much wanted to be there when he delivered it. I couldn't get out of bed or even sit up despite my best efforts. I had all of my previous symptoms with a particularly severe headache. The acute phase was much longer than before, lasting until the late afternoon but did eventually pass. I limped through the next week before finally getting an appointment for an MRI and blood work. I had a feeling something was up when halfway through my scan, the technician came in an asked,"So you've been having headaches?"