Quote:
Originally Posted by Rissa_TX
The doc said that it's likely that the MS has been attacking un-eloquent areas of my brain since I was a teenager. I know that's really rare - that most people are diagnosed between 20 and 40, so I also worry that my version of MS could be rabid (for lack of a better term). Does anyone have thoughts on this?
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Hi, Rissa.
I was diagnosed at the age of 25 but I have been able to take symptoms back to childhood possible even before my teens but it's hard to know what would have been normal at the time and what could be considered MS.
I have recently had a symptom confirmed as a MS symptom that I can remember having around the age of 12.
You will find quite a few people with MS that after learning and researching abou the disease realize they had symptoms as a kid.
This link is to The Rocky Mountain MS Center here in Colorado. They have a newsletter INFORMS and this one was dedicated to Pediatric MS.
http://www.mscenter.org/images/stori...ormsSpring.pdf
This is a small excerpt from the spring 2007 INFORMS........
Dr. W.: Pediatric MS is actually not
that uncommon. In fact, when large
MS centers look at their patient database,
they realize that up to 10% of
adult MS cases have had their first
symptoms before age 18. However, for
various reasons (lack of care provider
awareness that MS can strike in children,
mild symptoms in a patient too
young to realize these are not normal,
consideration of other more common
diseases…), often the diagnosis is not
made early on, and can be delayed
until adulthood. There are some reasons
to think that there are between
10,000 and 20,000 patients affected by
MS who are under the age of 18 in the
US, but the number still may be
underestimated.