Hi, I'm usually in the parkinson's forum. I am close to my ex-wife and have heard through the gapevine that she thinks she has MS. She has insurance starting in Jan. and has an appt with a primary care to begin workup. Could you tell me some of the "common" symptoms, how your condition started, etc.

Two bouts of optic neuritis followed by bouts of lower extremity spasticity and numbness and dizziness.

With love, Erika

For me, it was visual problems, blind patches, double, graying and bouncing of vision, instability (as in tripping over everything), numbness, tingling in hands feet arms and legs, bladder urgency/incontinence, extreme fatigue and major confusion and forgetfulness. I also had left-sided spasticity and crazy reflexes.

I think I ticked lots of boxes, but I am sure I had a few 'attacks' before the one that led to diagnosis, because I had lots of new and old lesions on my MRI.

I hope your ex-wife finds the answers she needs to treat the problems she is experiencing.

Regards

Lyn

No visual problems, dizzy, had to pee a lot, just a feeling that something was wrong. "Luckily" evoked potenials and LP showed problems or no one would have believed me.

Numbness in legs, visual problems, balance problems but the instances of unbalance were so far apart and infrequent I didn't pay much attention to them.

I was diagnosed in 2005 at 45 years of age but looking back I had subtle symptoms since I was in my 20's. Just nothing severe enough for me to check it out.

Severe double vision in 2005 got me to the neurologist and subsequently got the diagnosis.

I remember my first symptom being facial numbness and then tingling in arms and legs then balance problems.

I hope you are going to be supportive of your EX. Sounds like you care. And I hope she is supportive of you too.

Well, I have had symptoms since I was a kid. I was labled a hypochontriact by my mother so I learned to stay quiet and not complain.

I was 24, married for 4 years and my husband did alot of business travel. I was out mowing our lawn one cool spring morning while he was gone. Usually I could mow both front and back without a problem...not this day. I got half way through the back and my legs became weak, numb, pins and needles sensation. I needed to go sit down and ended up falling asleep.

I got up the next morning feeling fine, confused about the previous day. I once again went out to mow and my legs once again got numb, weak and with pins and needles sensations, but in a much shorter time...I never did get the lawn finished after that. Slowly, over days/weeks I started to add in more symptoms. By the time I thought I needed to see my PCP I had lost most of my strength and mobility.

Symptoms that remained during the entire diagnostic process:

- Bi-lateral leg weakness
- numb from the waist down
- tremors
- fatigue
- pins and needles
- vibrations from waist down
- pain
- L'Hermittes

Erratic blood pressure, insomnia...multiple days in hospital with misdiagnosis over yrs. Based on amount of lesions in brain & spinal chord they suspect I may have had it since my teens (now in md-40's). Last 6 years there were ER trips and hospitalizations for stroke level BP and "exhaustion" they only found the MS about 18 months ago. Seems all those hospital incidents were more than likely relapses. I always thought it was funny how I could be exhausted and hyper on 2-3 hrs sleep at the same time. I wish the best for your ex-wife and tell her to trust what she feels with her body and not to let the doctors quit until they figure it out.

Mine was total loss of hearing in one ear while sitting at my desk at work. It took about 5 seconds to go from totally normal hearing to completely gone, and it took about 8 weeks before it started coming back. It has come back to nearly normal in terms of hearing deficit, but I have tinnitus that comes and goes now and I don't process sounds very well in noisy environments anymore. For example, I have a really hard time hearing a conversation from somebody right beside me when I am in a noisy restaurant.

I was told from '05 on that my symptoms of numbness in toes, neuropathic pain, balance problems, restless leg syndrome, incontinence, vibrations, vertigo, etc were due to fibromyalgia, migraines, all sorts of things. My lesions weren't in the "right" place in my brain.
Got diagnosed in late '08 when my legs locked in spasms. It's a process of elimination and fitting into the McDonald criteria for MS.