We have one neuro pshychiatrist in the area so he gets all the referalls for SSD. Here SSD just has the mini psych eval. But about a year before my SSD required one my neuro had requested one and my insurance wouldn't pay for it so I didn't have it done. So I told this to the guy doing the testing. Oh, did he get upset. He said that to some one with MS and having cognitive proablems a complete neuro psych test was important so he did it for free! Of course what he turned in to the SSD was the mini one but I had him give a report to my lawyer who submitted it to the court when I had my hearing.

Anyway this neuro psychiatrist said that just with the testing alone he could pinpoint areas in the brain that had problems but just werent big enough to show up on MRI yet.

The report is very intersting. It finally validates to family etc that the symptoms you are having are real. It gives actual scientific evidence of what the problem is. It also let me know that some of the problems I had said were do to stress, age etc were actually MS.

the testing was rigorous but going back to get the results with the doctor was very interesting. One thing I got from talking to him was that with MS, you don't lose any of your memories, words or anything. It's just that because of things like stress, only a certain amount of things can come out of your brain. And stress can be anything, heat, arguements, hectic schedule, illness or anything.