NEUROLOGY COMMUNITY
can anybody make sense of this???

can anybody make sense of this???

Hi All!

ok well, i've never done anything like this, but i feel compelled to take things into my own hands. my story is a long one, and a rather nebulus one as my pcp likes to put it. 5 years ago, when i was 14 years old, i had boundless energy. i used to compete at top level in eventing, and i had a very busy schedual. one day i had a bad fall at an event, from which i was knocked out for 5 minutes. i woke up to an ambulance crew which i told to go away. the doctor followed me on a quad to make sure i was ok, but i brushed him off and went home, meerly annoyed about losing my place in the competion. since that day my life changed. i had headaches, and was very fatigued for the rest of the summer, but i didn't take it seriously, i just took the summer off to rest and be a normal kid. any time i tried to excercise i saw gold dots and then my vision went blurry. like it was after i fell. i also began experiancing extreme vertigo, which was draining.
  then when i tried to return to school, i hadn't the energy to last the day. my pcp sent me into a private hospital for tests under a nice elderly physician. i had blood tests, head cts and an mri. i was in hospital for 2 weeks, he didn't want to let me go home but i had gained some strenght from the rest and i needed to be set free! he then dropped a bomb on me, he banned school and all activity for 4 months!!. i was so dissappointed 4 months eventually passed and i readily went back to school. the return to school didn't go as expected. all my teachers kept telling me to put my head down and rest, and to go home and so on. so the principal devised a part time school schedual, so that i could attend a little at least. honestly, i felt like a freak, and since i was always a bright student, i felt like i was wasting my talents. but i had no choice.
   i was refered from the hospital to an endocrinologist, who said i had low cortisone levels and tested me in hospital for a week about that. no treatment. my first mri showed a white "glitch" just under my skull. no treatment. and with the development of tingling and numbness, i was sent to a neurologist. i had 2 weeks testing for that, this was when i was 15, in 2005, where i has evoked potentials, and blood tests. i had a brain and spinal mri. i remember the day i had that. after one full scan they took me out of the mri an the radiologist gave me contrast which i suspected was impromptu, i doubt it had been ordered. then i had another full scan. this took an hour. i went home and focused my energy on holding down a normal life. we never got any formal results. i never asked. i assumed if i had someting terrible wrong they'd call me.
      later on that year a chronic fatigue specialist, oh by the way this is sort of my diagnosis, nothings formal, anyway he said i had a thing called POTS. i don't know much about this but he sad i had an irregular heartbeat and low blood pressure and it might explain the constant vertigo! more time passed, and i tried accupuncture, ate healthily. refused to give up, did a little excercise whenever possible. i still LOVE excercise even thugh it makes me sick. i think it's important to keep ur body moving. so it had been a life long dream to go to boarding school in france like my sisters had done. i couldn't manage a year, but i convinced the doctor and my mum to let me go for 2 months!!! yay!! so off i went. it was great. sure i was very fatigued a lot, sure i has vision trouble when i was exhausted, indeed i suffered lots of vertigo, but i pushed on because i don't want this illness to take over my life. i must add that i've had better and worse times since i got sick and these few months were of course better times. weird huh? so i actually convinced everyone to let me stay out a further 2 months and i can now speak fluent french and made some very good friends over there. so it hasn't all been bad. i was in the north of france and the weather was cold. i mention this because it was well confirmed by this stage that i have NO tolerance for heat. all my symptoms multiply by 10 in heat. even a hot bath makes me faint!
   in a bid to move on,i convinced my mom to allow me to move to a compeditive academic school 2 hours from home with my friends. i decided in france that i would make a pretty good doctor. my grades were good, i was a quick learner, nd i understand what it's like to be sick. so after lots of persuading i convinced my mom to allow me to move. i got an apartment with a friend and said hello to independance. i was 17 going on 18.
   in school i made great progress. nobody could tell that i missed so much school, and i was managing to stay top of the class despite the fact that i went home to sleep everyday at 5! it was great. but unfortunetly my bubble was burst by a little thing called bells palsy. i woke up one morning in april, and i struggled to lift my eye lids. when i did i remember trying to walk to the bathroom but there was a crazy lack of strenght and movement down my right side. i was extra week, extra tired, and the right side of my face was completely paralysed! i had difficulty speaking, swallowing and blinking. it was a saturday morning, and i had no school, so i got away with living in denial until monday. then my mother marched me to the pcp on monday. she dxed me with bells palsy and gave me lots of steroids. i hate taking drugs. i used to b on lyrica and neurontin but i refused to take tablets that don't cure me as i fear they dull me and i can cope with the amount of pain i have usually. but these steroids were great. it took 2 months for the bells palsy to completely go all the same.
    i lost all the progress i made coping with fatigue. i was very weak again and i was sleeping lots too. my leg was stiff and i could harldy move my toes so i reluctantly went back to my pcp. she didn't look at my leg or my right side at all, she just sent me for physio. my physio dxed me with scoliosis as a result of right sided muscualr atrophy and muscular atrophy in my right leg, and right arm. i could only do very gentle excercises at this stage, but we began to try and combat this. my physio insisted i went back to a neurologist. i went back to the same one who had done the spinal scan and she said that i prob had chronic fatigue and couldn't help me. she didn't look at any scans and couldn't remember what tests i had. i had to remind her as she couldn't find my notes. i went home, uncured but happy that i didn't have any major problems to deal with. my physio didn't share the same sentiments. she had specialised on a neuro ward in a main hospital for 10 years and she said that there is definetly something wrong. so she insisted on a second opinion. that eventually came around. the neuro confirmed that i have a right side muscular atrophy and suggested possible m.s. but i have made huge improvements since i got bells p. before, i couldn't move my knee cap or squees my butt cheek, or even walk in a smooth gait. and now i can!! thanks to neuromuscular stimulators and excercises i have regained strenght but it took a very long time. the physio said she's never seen it take so long. if i over do it my calve muscles go funny and i get a thing called foot drop which makes me trip. but i don't want to get fitted for a brace as i think i might improve more soon! so this neurologist sent me for an uncontrasted brain mri. but he said since i was already improving maybe it was a virus or cfs. he asked me about the previous scans and i said they were clear... well i assumed they were.
     so i went to my pcp for results. it turns out the scans i had in 2005 weren't clear. i have a syrinx on my spinal cord. my pcp knows nothing about it. nobody does really, it was never followed up at the time. i don't have any other results yet but...
please help. what could all of this be?

thank you! xxx

p.s there was a bit more i needed to include in this which i may submit soon. :)
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