It was the summer after 7th grade when I started to feel weakness. At first my parents thought I was just becoming a lazy teenager. I wasnt going out to play with my friends like I use to. I was doing a lot of sitting on the couch and watching TV. It got worse and worse as the weeks went by.

When I finally asked for help I was finding it hard to get up from the chair to go to the bathroom. I remember sitting on the couch and being so thirsty. But it was such a chore to get up that I would wait until I was really thirsty so I could cut down on the trips. I told my mom how hard it was getting to get up and she took me to the doctors. The doctor said it was probably just a flu bug and to keep an eye on me.

A couple of days later I started having trouble focusing. I told my mom and she looked at my eyes. She told me to stop doing that. I didnt know what she was talking about. I went to the mirror and my left eye was completely turned in. I was cockeyed. I got really scared and started to cry. My mom and dad took me to the emergency room. The doctors didnt have a clue what was going on. They just told my mom to take to an eye doctor. He was worthless. Talking about eye patches and wearing glasses. Then I went in for a test where they hooked me up to a bunch of wires to test my nervous system. That doctor told us it might be neurological so we went to see a neurologist. Dr Cella. He asked me a couple of questions and did a couple of strength tests. He showed my mom how he could push my arms down with one finger even though I was trying as hard as I could to keep them up. Then he gave me a shot of something and I felt better. He looked at my mom and told her I have Myasthenia Gravis. We both said, Whats that? in unison. Boy did we find out.

I started taking mestinon 3 times a day. It helped a little. I could start going to school again, but was still pretty sick. I had an MRI at 14 and they said my thymus was slightly enlarged and had to go. I was scheduled for surgery in 3 months.

During that time I started to develop a cough. The doctors said I had to get better before they could operate. They put me on something for pneumonia but the cough just got worse. My doctor wanted an x-ray of my chest to look at my lungs. The x-ray was all cloudy so I got another MRI. I remember he came in the office after looking at the MRI and told me I wasnt going home. It seems that my thymus gland was now the size of a deflated basketball and had to go right away. The tumor was causing my breathing problems.

I went in the next day for the thymectomy. The surgery took 13 hours. I had to have split sternum surgery because my thymus was so big. I was in the ICU for a couple of days and I went home after 10 days total.

As I recovered from the surgery I started feel in better and better. My face stopped drooping and my smile got straight again. My eye, however, was still worthless. I went to an eye doctor. He said that the muscles in my eye were so weak that it would take surgery to correct it. I was now 15. I knew that if I didnt get my eye fixed I would probably never have a girlfriend. Thats a big deal for 15 year old boy who had yet to kiss a girl. I got the surgery and my eye looked better after the swelling went down. I still had double vision though. After a few months the eye got stronger and the double vision went away.



I have been in remission now for almost 25 years. I still get tired and feel week easier than most people, but it nothing like when I was a kid.

Dr. Cella saved my life that day. I havent talked to him in years. I often wonder if he would remember me.