Simply because I am. There is a lot of medical history there. I've had a hysterectomy to fix my endo, a recent gall bladder removal to deal with spasms that went for 5 years without diagnosis, breasts that keep popping up cysts and other weird things...and then there's this.
I have fibro, so some of the typical things like fatigue can get written off as that. I've also had anterior uvitis more than once. I have chronic migraines and IBS. That all said, they've not been able to figure out why I have such severe nerve pain, trigeminal neuralgia, clonus and muscle spasms in my left leg, urge incontinence, odd smells that aren't really there...etc.
I started with symptoms in 2003. From there I've continued to have flares that pop up and then leave me with things that are new and don't go away each time. I've been MRI'd twice - the first time showed only one spot, the second time showed many small ones and one larger one - but they were all non-specific. The symptoms concerned enough that I went for a tap, and that was negative. That would have been in 2009ish. So, once the neuro said not MS, I was left to kind of wait it out and to douse the nerve pain with carbamazapine and gabapentin.
Well, fast forward till now and in this flare even my high doses of the drugs aren't working. My left leg is numb from about mid thigh down, though the lower you go on it the more numb it is. It's doing the old vibrating thing and back to the muscle cramps and it feels like it weighs a ton. It feels weak and unsteady so I'm back to the cane. This is the first time my left arm has felt this numb and weak too, which is a pain in the butt, since that's the one I use to operate my cane with. I'm having a harder time reading or understanding what people are saying to me (people can get snarky the fourth time you ask them to repeat themselves) and I have a hard time finding words. I've had problems for years with that and with replacing words with the wrong one, but this time it's dialed up like crazy. Plus my 'normal' fog from fibro and the meds is twice as bad.
So I went to see my dr's office. At the moment they have steady nurse practitioners and a rotating base of locum drs. I lucked out and found one that has done a lot of research on brain inflammation. He's asked me to talk to a few people with ms in my area and the ms society here to see who is the best ms dr in my province and then he'll refer me to him. Plus he recommended a really neat book. So overall I'm happy to be getting hopefully to a diagnosis. He feels that if it isn't an atypical ms, it's got to be something related.
I'd appreciate if anyone has some ideas on how to deal with the numb body parts to keep from falling or on any of the other areas. I ended up on a melt down today because of the forgetfulness/butchered communication skills. Even this typing this thing out has resulted in a million corrections. I'm in a hopeful, but weepy because I'm frustrated place.
Hope that you're all as well as you can be!
I have fibro, so some of the typical things like fatigue can get written off as that. I've also had anterior uvitis more than once. I have chronic migraines and IBS. That all said, they've not been able to figure out why I have such severe nerve pain, trigeminal neuralgia, clonus and muscle spasms in my left leg, urge incontinence, odd smells that aren't really there...etc.
I started with symptoms in 2003. From there I've continued to have flares that pop up and then leave me with things that are new and don't go away each time. I've been MRI'd twice - the first time showed only one spot, the second time showed many small ones and one larger one - but they were all non-specific. The symptoms concerned enough that I went for a tap, and that was negative. That would have been in 2009ish. So, once the neuro said not MS, I was left to kind of wait it out and to douse the nerve pain with carbamazapine and gabapentin.
Well, fast forward till now and in this flare even my high doses of the drugs aren't working. My left leg is numb from about mid thigh down, though the lower you go on it the more numb it is. It's doing the old vibrating thing and back to the muscle cramps and it feels like it weighs a ton. It feels weak and unsteady so I'm back to the cane. This is the first time my left arm has felt this numb and weak too, which is a pain in the butt, since that's the one I use to operate my cane with. I'm having a harder time reading or understanding what people are saying to me (people can get snarky the fourth time you ask them to repeat themselves) and I have a hard time finding words. I've had problems for years with that and with replacing words with the wrong one, but this time it's dialed up like crazy. Plus my 'normal' fog from fibro and the meds is twice as bad.
So I went to see my dr's office. At the moment they have steady nurse practitioners and a rotating base of locum drs. I lucked out and found one that has done a lot of research on brain inflammation. He's asked me to talk to a few people with ms in my area and the ms society here to see who is the best ms dr in my province and then he'll refer me to him. Plus he recommended a really neat book. So overall I'm happy to be getting hopefully to a diagnosis. He feels that if it isn't an atypical ms, it's got to be something related.
I'd appreciate if anyone has some ideas on how to deal with the numb body parts to keep from falling or on any of the other areas. I ended up on a melt down today because of the forgetfulness/butchered communication skills. Even this typing this thing out has resulted in a million corrections. I'm in a hopeful, but weepy because I'm frustrated place.
Hope that you're all as well as you can be!
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