Afraid of MS

[numberology]

Hello,
I am a male in mid 40s and I am seeking some input from the ms community.
In 2013 I had a 6 week episode of bladder discomfort. Sometimes I took a painkiller at night. I had no bladder dysfunction by any means, just pain. I thought of symptoms of interstitial cystitis and I took out lots of “wrong” foods. Went to urologist, did CT scan, but came up with nothing. Slowly it went away and I am eating most of the foods I used to.  It never came back.
9 months later, in May 2014 I started to have tingling in my left hand/arm/neck/face along with some skin numbness. It was never at the same place and sometimes it was tingling, sometimes skin numbness. I never lost any control and whatever I grabbed I had a full “feeling” of it. There was no pain. After 3 weeks it left with no residuals. Six months later, I felt pressure in my right eye. This has never really gone away. No vision problems. I went to eye specialist, did the optomap, everything is clear. 9 months after the first tingling episode, it came again. But after three weeks, one night in March this year, I felt a sensation of “weakness originating from my tail bone, going down through my legs. I was scared. Next morning it was gone and that was it. I had a year earlier a cyst removed from my tailbone, I wonder if it had got to do anything with that? On March 16 when I was at work, all of the sudden my knees felt they were attacked by weakness. It was like I was walking on 80% of my knee strength. Ever since I have been struggling with either weak knees of weak upper legs. It may come and go more than once on a single day. I can jog and do other things and there is no loss of feeling or power. Sometimes I feel that there is a drop of cold water falling on a knee or leg, then that feeling goes away. There is no tingling or skin numbness. I went to my primary, he said that it could be anxiety related since I am suffering from depression and a good dose of anxiety my whole life. After some testing did not think it could be ms. Still, I went to a neurologist and after one hour of testing he said he didn’t believe ms. Went for a complete MRI w/o contrast, it did not point to a disease whatsoever. I have not had any other ms symptom.
Docs say I must go for neurological/psychological anxiety test.
I have always been a worrier and I do have sincere worries about issues. Is this anxiety or could it be a start of ms, like a very first flare up? I trust my docs as they have been very serious and understanding with me. Primary put me on Buspirone to get my anxiety under control. I can’t stop thinking about ms.
Please advice. Thanks for reading.

[numberology]

Hi again. My VEP came clear as well. Symptoms haven't gone though. Still having weak knees. Two weeks from now I got an app with neuro psychologist. Really hope that this will do it....

[numberology]

Thanks a LOT for your prompt answer. I helped me a lot. It is an answer kind of consistent what I received from somebody else as well. After 3 months of knee weakness I am growing tired of it...I will go to a neuro-Psychiatrist next month and go from there. A VEP is still in the planning though. My neuro ordered it and insurance pays for it...

[supermum_ms]

Hi and welcome,

I understand your fearful of MS but non of the 'symptoms' you've mentioned are very suggestive or pattern consistent, for your symptom causation to be likely from a neurological condition like MS.

A patient needs to have clinically abnormal neurological signs and at least some suggestive diagnostic test evidence (eg MRI, LP, VEP etc) for a neurological causation to even get on your list of potential cause. If your clinical and test evidence was all 'neurologically normal' your diagnostic evidence is pointing away from conditions like MS and pointing toward an alternate causation...    

What you have described from my understanding, 'could' actually be consistent with mental health causation. If your anxiety has a tendency to hyper focus onto specific worries as you've mentioned, it's 'possible' that you're anxiety has fixated on to your health.

It's not uncommon when someone is specifically fearful of a medical condition like MS,  that their initial anxiety will have been sparked by googling a symptom and coming across MS whilst googling then gives their anxiety it's focus. Keep in mind that there are so many symptoms associated with MS, that MS will come up about 99.99% in google symptom searches and realistically MS is 'not' the most likely explanation for every symptom associated with it.

People with health anxiety typically find the more they read about a medical condition, the more symptoms associated with that condition they start to experience. When health anxiety is focused on to MS, the symptoms are usually sensory and their symptoms will often change, rapidly multiply, move from one place to another, in all peripheral limbs, all over their body etc.

Heath anxiety symptom pattern is typically related to the amount of focused attention you give your body and is usually quite inconsistent with the way MS actually presents and or symptoms progress over time. Significantly health anxiety often creates an inaccurate perception of abnormality, which is not corroborated by any diagnostic test evidence eg muscle weakness is clinically measurable but with H/A the diagnostic evidence will be normal, so what they've perceived to be abnormal won't actually be abnormal.
  
I would suggest if you are still fearful of having MS, after diagnostically being clinically assessed, having MRI's, visual testing etc and nothing was suggestive or consistent with your symptoms being caused by a neurological condition like MS, that it would be in your best interest to have your mental health assessed by a psychiatrist of psychologist, as well as considering alternate treatment options to better control your anxiety.

Food for thought...........JJ