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Originally Posted by bowdowntobri
Hello everyone. My name's Sabrina and I posted this yesterday in the new member welcome forum and then realized that it was probably not the best place for it.
I'm a 26 year old female grad student in psychology. I few weeks ago I participated in an MRI study because my friend was running it and they were going to pay me. I got a picture of my brain - so cool for nerd like me!
Anyway, flash forward to this Wednesday (7/25). I received a call from the student health center because they found something weird on the MRI and wanted me to come in to talk about it. After all the mumbo jumbo about how the MRI was just for research and not for diagnostics, I shouldn't take it as fact, ect., they said that the study neuroradiologist found "innumerable subcortical and deep white matter hyper intensities extending superiorly into centrum semiovale consistent with demyelinating process such as MS."
So I have a referral now to a neurologist to get another brain MRI with and without contrast to see if that can either confirm the findings or figure out what is going on. As far as I can tell, I have no discernible symptoms that are out of the ordinary for me or that are indicative of a "flare up" (from what I can tell).
So what do you guys think is going on? What sort of questions should I be asking the neurologist about? Logical next steps for me? I appreciate any opinions!
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BTW, I don't think I ever responded to your initial questions. The description of your MRI sounds exactly like mine did...high intensity white matter spots. As Dejibo said, that can describe any number of diseases including demyelinating types like MS, or other things like small vessel disease. It isn't uncommon to have lesions without symptoms. I had an initial episode of hearing loss and at that time I had 2 lesions. Since that time, over the course of about 7 years, my lesion count has jumped to 3, then 7, and now around 15, all without any further events that I would recognize as a "flare". I have a few things now like increased sensitivity to excess heat, and I think I am slightly more forgetful, that could be MS symptoms, but that could just be me getting old too.
So go in with an open mind and understand that diagnosing MS is very much a process of elimination where other things are ruled out. There is also a subcategory of MS unofficially referred to as benign MS, for people who have very few symptoms and who don't progress very rapidly. I would put myself in that category despite my increased lesion count, because the lesions so far have not led to any flares or increased disability.
Good Luck!