Hello and nice to meet you all,
I have been lurking for some weeks and so I know and appreciate the expertise you possess. I'd like your reactions to my current situation but I will try to do the history real quick. I have been dealing with lower back and cervical pain issues for 3 years now. I had a fusion surgery for lower back that failed and a big surgery to fix that mess just this past June. Recovery has been rough and in the middle of this I am having neck pain and was Dx with a cervical hernaition at C5-6 to boot.
In August I had an epidural steroid injection in my neck to treat the herniation. I had a reaction to the steroid and within days I developed a severely irregular heartbeat. Rx'd a beta blocker for that and I soon developed vertigo. Lasted a short few days and gone. A month later the vertigo came back and was not typical vertigo but dreadful anyway. Lasted a week and faded. Dec 16th the vertigo-like ick came back and it was much worse and lasted until a few days ago. During this episode I was at my neeurosurgeon's office and he found I had Hoffman's Sign? He sent me to a neuro because he felt my symtpoms could not be due to the cervical herniation.
My symtom's have been: vertigo-like illness with extreme nausea and vomiting, gait disturbance, imbalance, funny head sensation that is like L'Hermitte's Sign but not quite, extreme weakness and stiffness in hips and legs, leg pain, roaming arm and hand pain, right hand is stiff, neck pain, recurrent bladder infections, tongue biting in sleep, fatigue. I was seen by a neuro (12/28). Neuro ordered an MRI (no contrast) and kept me home from work and Rx'd phenergan for the nausea and that was it. Oh, her neuro exam showed no problems though she didn't check the Hoffman's Reflex.
MRI showed no tumors (Phew!) and 5-10 nonspecific, small supratentorial white matter high T2 signal foci. The radiologist writes "I could not exclude a demyelinating process such as MS. However, these could simply represent changes of aging or be associated with other disease or even migraine headaches. I recommend clinical correlation. If there is a concern for MS then lab testing may be helpful".
My symtpoms have eased up. They are not gone but they are much better. My neuro thinks this MRI is not the MRI of a person with MS. 'MS goes way down on my list", she tells me. Upon being pressed, doc tells me these lesions are insignificant and perfectly typical even though I do not have any diseases that typically cause lesions like migraine headaches. Since I am getting better her plan is to monitor and hope this is some unknown illness that is passing. If I relapse? Her next step is to do Evoked Potentials. Since she let me go back to work I was thrilled and put MS away for good. I wrote some folks on the MS forum at Healthboards to thank them and tell them my good news and they suggested I might want to slow down. Some of the feedback I got was very critical of this medical care.
I don't know what to think? Are such lesions so insignificant? Can I afford to just wait and see? Is this neuro's plan flawed? I haven't had bloodwork to rule out Lyme. But I am a recovering back surgery patient. Until the vertigo and strobe like thing in my head started, I thought my bad back explained everything. Would you want a second opinion or an MRI with contrast? Thanks so much for reading this book! Take good care - suzyq