Pain!

[zoefromsussex]

Hello all,

It's been a VERY long time since I logged in but I would like to ask a question please!

Last week, out of the blue, I developed a terrible pain in my right leg. I can pin point a particularly painful spot on my calf but generally it's a dull aching cramp kind of pain and it sends a shooting pain sometimes down the whole leg plus numbness and tingling n both feet.

Saw gp yesterday who says ms pain is his guess and prescribed amitriptyline.

I do exercise lots (or did before this pain!) so I was worried about an injury but I am not aware of any injuries.

Can MS pain come on this suddenly and how can you tell if it's caused by MS or something else?

[zoefromsussex]

Thanks Kyle,

Part of me thinks it's an injury because the pain gets worse when I move my leg in certain ways & because I was doing the 30 day shred before the pain started up which was really taxing me! However, I wasn't aware of hurting myself & I have regular occasions where I get the same pain and then it vanishes after a day or so (had it in my thigh, neck, back etc)  

This is the first time it's really lasted & it's so frustrating as I want to exercise but it hurts too much! I also had a brief reoccurrence of the lovely 'hug' yesterday right as I was getting the kids from school! I was literally sweating with the pain!

So I really don't know if it's ms or not but the primary is pretty convinced it is and says they'll increase the amitriptyline as required and offered me diazepam too but I can't really take that with kids to care for. Need to be on the ball!

[kwarendorf]

Hi ZFS -

Neuropathic (MS) pain can indeed appear suddenly. Assuming that there is no physical cause for the pain (sprain, rash, cut, pulled muscle) it is likely that your leg pain is neuropathic.

At one time I was coooonvinced I had Athlete's Foot, a painful fungal infection. My feet, more the left than the right, alternately burned under my toes or felt like someone had dropped a bowling ball on them. I stopped at the drug store and bought some OTC remedy. When I went to apply it I could see no evidence of Athlete's Foot! It was bad information sent from my brain to the pain center for my feet that was causing the problem.

Meds like amitriptilyne can help. Sometimes it takes a while to get the dose right. SOmetimes a second med needs to be added. I take amitriptilyne and Lyrica and my feet don't hurt :-)

Kyle

[LisaJF]

Please let us know what your primary says!

[zoefromsussex]

Thanks for the feedback. I will go back to my gp (same as a primary care dr over here) but I think I'll be wasting my time since he seems to have decided MS is the cause! I'm not so sure myself!

[Ufrustrated2]

that's a dark-comical description of MS Pastor Dan. for many of us that has been the reality of diagnosis of our neuro issues.

[LisaJF]

Hi Zoe,

Nice to see you again (its been awhile).

I'm sorry to hear of your pain that you have.  

As for what PastorDan said in relation to blood clot...I can understand why he thought of it.

However, if there's no redness, tenderness upon touch, swelling greater in right than in left...I would say that cause would be on the minimal side.

To me, I've have had pain that started abruptly and lasted up to 6 weeks, 24/7.  Now one doctor mentioned the pain was from my breast biopsy which I had performed on December 22nd.  I was fine after the procedure. Fifteen days later (jan 7), I began having nipple pain (sharp, shooting, stabbing, burning pain) along with the fact that nothing could touch it so I had to put a medicine cup over it with tape.  (Yes it looked odd under sweaters lol)

I had what they called Allodynia.  Whether it was caused by my MS or caused from the procedure (which I doubt..15 days later)..I couldnt tell you.

But yes, I believe MS can cause that kind of pain out of the blue for no reason at all.

However, if you're concerned that it may be something else other than MS, perhaps your primary would order an ultrasound of your right leg just in case? To be on the safe side?

Glad to see you again

Lisa

[PastorDan]

Whenever I hear leg and pain in the same sentence, the idea of blood clots comes to mind, but if your doc looked at it and didn't go that route, well...

Keep up the (reasonable) exercise, wrap it or apply ice or warmth, or whatever makes it seem better.  Pray, too.

Unfortunately, I think there are two "mindset" issues to watch for.   Maybe the wrong word, but anyway...   Firstly, anything we can't explain, we can blame on MS, until we see something pointing elsewhere.  Secondly, it's just like MS: a "diagnosis by exclusion," meaning that you only conclude it's MS if there's no other credible explanation for whatever grab bag of symptoms you might have out of the scads of them reported by pwMS.

So, it's probably MS unless you can prove otherwise, and it's not MS until you can't prove otherwise.