Can ms be ruled out with lumbar puncture and MRI

[heljell]

32 year old healthy just history of migrains. A few years ago I developed sever fatigue, the kind where your afraid to walk to the bathroom because you my be stuck in it or between for hours, driving to the store takes so much out of you that you cant go in or drive home. At first thought it was the flue minor body aches, after 2 days of not developing any other flue like symptoms afraid it was going to be a hard hitting long lasting flue, go to the doctor recieve tamiflue, took one dose knocked out for over 12 hours woke up feeling confused disoriented. Decided not to continue with the medication. 2 weeks go by no improvement so I decide to fight through the fatigue, in doing so I find trying to put keys in a lock my hands shake so bad that I drop the several times (frustrating to work so hard when so weak) still unable to make it to the grocery store, unable to have full conversations and noted stuttering which is completely new to me, unable to concentrate, remember anything, my body feels so weak it feels difficult to move my hands breath, anything, also an irritable bladder, difficulty finding words, truely frightning

At this point sure Im dying I demand my doctor do something, sends me for full lab work up sleep study, neuro, find lesions bilat white matter to frontal and occipital lobes. Knowing my city I request to be refered to stanford and my primary agrees that it seems like ms and wants the best treatment. Stanford does MRI of my neck to check for demilination and lumbar puncture, labs show pos. for sjogrens, stanford say that explains it all sends me home, no treatment yeah not ms.

I still have times of fatigue but not anything like the one episode which did last more than 6 very long weeks, maybe a day and not that intense. I still have neuro symptoms of feeling like i just walked off a boat, tremors, sometimes i feel like water is dripping on my hand but its dry, if i sit in a chair after 15 min my legs fall asleep, my hands and arms frequently fall asleep. I have had 2 children without coplications all before the odd fatigue, could it have been a stroke? this did happen the end of may and noted that it was worse on really hot days and better in evennings after the sun would go down along with the temp

[heljell]

Thanks for the reply. Do you know how to find a good rhuematologist I saw one which looked at my lab work and dismissed the entire thingsaying it was a false positive and when I pushed the issue with my symptoms stated "well i could do a painfull lip biopsy then but theirs no treatment just mouth moisturizer and eye drops". If you know where I should star that would be helpful.

Thank you so much.

[Lulu54]

Hi and welcome to the MS forum.  Sjogrens is a great mimic of MS and has many of the same symptoms. Stanford is a great place to go and those docs know their diseases.  

What you describe and how these symtoms are transient makes me think that you have NOT had a stroke.  


There should be some attempts by your doctors to manage the Sjogren symptoms - you should have a serious discussion with them.  

You are more than welcome to stick around here - we have a very smart community about a lot of diseases, but you might also want to find a Sjogren's group that can help you with your specific questions.


And, although it would be pretty rare, you could have both MS and Sjogrens, but that would be rare.  You could allways request a second opinion to confirm what Stanford's docs have told you.

be well, Lulu