When was your first deffinate symptom of MS?

This Poll should include all limbolanders too.

I was DX at 36...ist deffinate SX at 24.

Well, they carried me out of work and over to the emergency room once when I was 22 and couldn't walk all of a sudden.

Then after 30 years of being completely comfortable with the fact that my body (and brain) don't work quite the same as everyone else's, they gave me a surprise dx of MS and HNPP when I was 52.

I'm not absolutely sure when my first definite symptom was.

My knee started giving out when I was in my late teens. Eventually I had to quit baseball, running, etc. because I'd fall (with no pain, till I hit the ground).

In retrospect, I probably had an attack, lasting about 3 months, just prior to the falling problem. I guess I was 18 yrs old then.

Lots of bowel troubles, spasms, face numbness, etc. after that . . .

It wasn't till a BIG (unquestionable) attack when I was 31, that "Probable MS" was laid on the table.

Cherie

My first symptoms that I can remember began at age 14 with numbness and weakness in my left arm. Catscans were run but nothing showed. I was also a sickly child. MS wasn't actually suspected until I was 39 and had a routine MRI because of buzzing in my ear. The Ear nose throat specialist said "You have MS" thus the beginning of a 2 year odysey of quacks for neuros who kept dismissing me. I finally prayed for an attack just to get this over with because the symptoms had become so severe yet nothing showed. I woke up 2 days later with optic neuritis. Two months later I woke up totally deaf in the left ear and although my neuro had diagnosed me based on symptoms and old Mri's with lesions that had been missed, (3 to be exact) He hospitalized me and ran tests which FINALLY confirmed MS. I was about to turn 42 at the time of the diagnosis.

SF

I find it difficult to know when I had my first definite MS symptom vs normal child hood stuff.

Even before my teens....friends would always complain I was walking into them, I can't remember a time when my balance was good. I started falling often like alot of kids but it just never improved.

I always had trouble riding a bike...my legs would get tired, felt like I didn't have any strength and I could not keep up with my friends yet I was solid muscle. I had a hard time laying out in the sun, I would have to come in and take a nap after just a short time and that only got worse as I headed into my mid-teens.

I finally decided being tan was not as important as hanging out with friends

I was dx'd at 25 years old.

IF I have MS (not diagnosed), the first definite symptom would have been the painful shocks beneath my ears at age 42, which I think was a small episode of bilateral trigeminal neuralgia.

However, when I was 25, two to four months after the birth of my first child--prime time for "relapses," I think--I had a huge dizzy spell which MAY have been part of all this (maybe not).

After my second child, numbness in my hip. Never saw a doctor about anything til age 42.

Nancy T.

Oscillopsia at 24

Pardon my stupidity, but what is that?

My Mother told me, after my DX, that she remembers incidents in my childhood that may have been related to MS. I guess I was having too much fun to notice. Just thought it was all part of growing up.

Hi Sally,

I chose 10-20, but I remember some vague symptoms as a young child, as early as maybe 7 or 8 years old. I don't know that it means I had it back then, but I had weird things happen with my health for as long as I remember, even though I was "the picture of health" in many ways.

From what I have written In my diary and talking with my oldest brother, I have probably had MS since my late teens. Probably about 20 years now. I have never been a lazy person, but In my late teens after I joined the Army I would get tired very easy. It was tough passing some of the physical fitness test. I always had to work extra hard to do a lot of things that come to most people very easy. I always wondered why some things was harder for me to do. When I was diagnossed with MS It all made sense.