I was 42 and it was reallyonly in hindsight that i could see that i had had mild symptoms in the past but they were all either so vague that they did not seem to make much sense eg a small patch of numbness on the right side of my face that lasted a few days, or they were the kind of thing that could be explained in other ways eg bladder weakness in an overweight older female, numbness in my right hand at time ( had been blamed in carpal tunnel which has since been excluded). I had had one period of illness that put me off work for quite a while (severe fatigue was the major problem) they just excluded infection etc and said eventually that it had features of an auto immune issue- that was only about a year before i was actually dx. My dx came after developing severe vertigo/balance problems. On dx i was told that i had probably had MS for at least a decade because of the number and pattern of lesions present- thats when i was told these other issues were most likely to be MS too. The one thing i have learnt about this disease is that while there may be more common patterns, there is no hard and fast rules and has already been pointed out, they say that most people are dx between the ages of 19 and 40 , they used to say it was only an adults disease, sadly they know that is not the truth now and that is does actually affect kids too