Why is my body boycotting my left leg?

[Courtlee1101]

I'm new here, and desperate for answers. A few months ago I started to experience numbness and severe tingling in my left toes. Since then a weak dragging feeling has crept up my left leg and into my left arm. A few nights ago I felt something like an electric current run up and down my left arm leaving I ice cold and leaving get me unable to make a fist. When I tried to stand up and walk my left leg just folded at the knee. Now I'm walking with a limp and scared that's it's not going to leave. I went to the er and they did an mri but said they didn't see any lesions. I was told to follow up with my neuro.
Does this sound like ms? Could the hospital be wrong?  

[essdipity]

Okay, you've had a brain MRI with and without contrast, all to the good. We don't know whether it was done using the MS protocol, meaning thin 'slices' to detect possible small lesions, so... And we don't know who the radiologist was, or how competent he is.

I was also thinking that if this is MS, then your symptoms could come from the spinal cord, which is cervical and thoracic spine, which were not imaged. However, now that you're feeling symptoms in your face, that is less likely. Central nervous system lesions cause damage at the immediate location or lower, never higher.

So, lots of questions, no answers. But I do have some advice. If your neuro won't even return your calls or have you come in, he is useless. I assume this is a general neurologist, and often these are a mile wide and an inch deep. Not necessarily, but often. For MS purposes you need a subspecialist in MS, someone who sees mainly MS patients. This kind of doctor can at least tell you whether you do not have MS, which is better than the one you have now is doing. Being sent to an ER is just wrong. It's possible you need IV steroids to abort what's going on, whatever it is, and your current neuro seems unable to make that call.

I hope you live in or near a city with a lot of competent neurologists. Please do talk to your primary doctor about this so you can get to the bottom of things. I'm sure you'll feel calmer once you're in the hands of a good diagnostician.

[essdipity]

Hi. Yes, this could still be MS, but it could be a bunch of other things too. You don't say what kind of MRI was done, or of what. Do you have a neurologist? If so, get in as soon as you can, and meanwhile see your primary doctor. You need to have the possibilities winnowed down, and an ER is seldom the right place for that. Good luck.

[Courtlee1101]

Thank you for your response! They did a MRI of my brain. It lasted about 40 minutes and halfway through they injected some dye and sent me back in to finish. I recently started seeing a neurologist. I've only seen him twice though. My regular doctor sent me to him because he feared I had MS. The second time I saw him was when I could barely walk and he told me to go to the er. Now, I can't get him to call me back and I am progressively getting worse. I am going to try again tomorrow morning and if he doesn't see me then I am going to go back to my primary dr. The left side of my face is starting to feel like the rest of the left side of my body...its really freaking me out.