Oh yeah. Don't get me wrong. I did as well.

I don't know about your area of Canada, but on the East Coast, my experience has been, "We're not too sure, but you said you have pain, here's another prescription for Endocet!".

I've now had 3 prescriptions for the stuff, as well as a 'take home' bottle from the hospital to 'tide me over' till I started IVSM. All 3 scripts came from walk in clinic doctors.

Then there was neurologist who 'examined' me for 5 minutes, and took home his pretty paycheque after saying "stress".

At least 1 of the various doctors I saw during my year pre-diagnosis was nice enough to send me for xrays.

If that's not enough... the Carbamazepine prescription came from a doctor I had seen 1 time earlier at the walk in clinic, who I was then seeing at the hospital. He prescribed me the Endocet x2 of 3 scripts I had.

I digress. I could go on all day about this.

Interesting that about 65% of us either didn't have "enough" O-bands to influence the dx process, and/or we didn't even have a LP.

Even if we only count the people that KNOW their results, it's about 50/50 on having the required amount (to influence the dx).

And, there are a large group of us that KNOW we didn't have enough to add credence to the dx process . . . yet we still have the dx.

There seem to very few people that get a dx, without very strong "other" evidence anyway; lesions, clinical testing results, clear attack history.

Based on this (which is very similar to the poll results from the other forum a few years ago), there really doesn't seem to be much point in getting a LP done, does there?

I wonder where they got the approximate "90% of those with MS have O-bands" stat? Maybe that is based on OLD (pre MRI) information, because historically they didn't give out a MS dx unless/until they saw the O-bands.

Cherie

Hehe! I thought historically they used the bathtub diagnosis... in which case, I'd have not been diagnosed myself because I can still enjoy my warm baths !

Like I said in my case however, my guy's just Mr. Thorough. I guess since there's no 'definitive' test for MS like blood work, he just wants to be sure he's giving out the most checked over series of tests he has available to him.

Then you wonder, perhaps he's been asked to LP new suspected cases of MS for a study?

I could always ask him! I see him next Monday. I'll write that down on the sticky note I have to take there I have to bring up the spinal results anyways, because I want a copy to show here!

I had 16 O-Bands. None in the Serum.

My STATS:
I was diagnosed with MS based on scans and OB's. I had 16 bands when tested last month. None in the Serum, all in the CSF. Im still not sure what that many bands suggests.

Chad