Sometimes it takes a long time to find a doctor who is on the same page as you're on, who has a sense of where you're coming from. Some doctors just don't have that skill even though they may be really adept in other skills they also need if they're going to be decent doctors.

I'm not sure why so many people with MS have to wait a long time for a diagnosis. It must be a difficult disorder to diagnose, with lots of look-alike diseases to choose from. Then, too, some doctors tend to take women patients' symptoms less seriously than they do men's, and MS seems to affect woman more often than men.

I suspect that some doctors just don't want to diagnose MS because they can't offer us much by way of a remedy or cure, and they don't want to be stuck filling out lots of forms for the next several decades for an MS patient who needs to apply for a disability pension or handicapped parking or whatever. They'd really prefer to have patients with a more challenging diagnosis, something interesting that they can write up in a medical journal. To a neurologist, a case of MS is very ho-hum because it's a fairly common neurological disease.

I'm glad you were able to find the medical attention you needed and it sounds as if you now realize that you and your doctor(s) can work together as a team.