Helppppp! I do not have ms or anything else.

[DavidinLexington]

My name is David and I am in Kentucky.  About 10 years ago I had a short episode with pain in my eyes which seems almost constant where the vision went blurry for a few minutes.  Doctor diagnosed it as "optical migraine".  Over the years I have had episodes of what I now know to be vertigo and went to the hospital but because I suffer from panic disorder they just kind of all act like they think anything they cannot immediately see in preliminary tests is imagined.  I do have panic disorder.  I have never been accused of being a hypochondriac.  In the last 2 years I started waking up in the middle of the night very early in the night having to go pee but then pee'd very little and cannot go back to sleep.  I have had a bad increase in dizziness and confusion that does not seem to respond to my medication for panic disorder.  But I really thought it was just really bad panic attacks despite the other panic attack symptoms were not there.  And the doctor passed off the urinating at night because I am a 46 year old male.  I have had in the last several years an increase in clumsiness but just sort of passed it off, you know bumping in to doors, tripping on the steps, losing my balance and falling and I have had a weird sort of confusion that never seems to go away.  The confusion seems to be where I am talking or typing and suddenly words that I know very well just will not come to me....... like "toaster" or words that are related to my job that I see every day.  I have been forgetting over and over what my passwords are to get into my computer system at work, what my employee number is and all kinds of things.  My partner has to tell me words all the time cause I just cannot remember them, common words and I have to describe them in order to be told the word.  I am forgetting how to spell things that I know very well how to spell, my fingers are clumsy when typing, my typing speed is going way down and I find I spend half the time hitting backspace to correct errors and sometimes cannot remember a word at all and have to use another word instead.  In addition to these I also found out at the neurologists office when sent that I cannot stand for long with my eyes closed and cannot pass a field sobriety test.  So I was sitting on the couch one Saturday morning on the laptop very early in the morning before anybody else was awake and I noticed the computer screen going blurry.  Then I got up to go get a cup of coffee and suddenly it felt like the floor had dropped out from under me and my hand felt like I was going to drop the coffee cup and I attempted to sit it on the dining room table 3 times before my double vision did not trick me into almost dropping it.  I felt my way back along the wall to the sofa and laid down.  I felt sort of partially paralyzed or something.  I could not walk anywhere in the house to wake anybody else. I picked up the phone and the battery was dead.  I thought about trying to crawl to the antique telephone in the living room but decided if I made it there I could not dial it with putting my fingers in the number holes and turning it.   So I laid on the couch for 2 hours and when others woke up I talked like a drunk with speech slurring.  They called an ambulance and I could not even put on my own clothes.  But by the time the ambulance had me half way to the hospital I could talk better already.  I suffered from double vision and difficulty walking for about another 8 hours after this.  I was taken to the hospital and they checked me for stroke and heart attack and quickly released me.  I was released and spent the day in bed.  The next morning I felt fine.  On the following Monday I went to my family doctor and for some reason he decided I needed to be tested for some disease called MS.  I went through all the tests, evoked potentials, lumbar puncture, MRI with contrast and without and the Neurologist who was absolutely sure I had ms suddenly changed his mind and told me after he got all the tests back that I was tested for a variety of illnesses and I do not have any problems and I do not have MS and that maybe I should see a psychiatrist rather than my family doctor to treat my panic disorder and I might not be getting the proper care.  So I have had tests on everything from my arteries to my brain and spinal fluid and I have no other problems and I have not had a stroke and I do not have ms.  This jerk without even knowing me has just assumed all my symptoms are psychological when he has seen in his office that I cannot pass a field sobriety test?  And a lady on facebook I know with ms has said I should ask for my records from him and ask for the full reading of the mri not just the "impression" but the only thing in my records is the "impression" which tells me he has not even read the mri.  So tell me after I have written my entire story.  Am I suddenly a hypochondriac when I have never imagined illness in the past and my doctor is the one who brought it up to begin with?  I am walking so poorly when I stand for a while that I almost fell last weekend and stomped on a bunch of flowers at a museum tour of a historic home.  Yeah I guess I did that for show.  It embarrassed the living crap out of me.  I am getting extremely frustrated and do not know what to do next.  Do I just wait?  I don't know what to do.  HELPPPPPPPP.  

[KristineH]

What an interesting conversation- I know it's incredibly frustrating to feel as though you are being dismissed by doctors and that your symptoms are somehow in your head. I know I have been there.

Of course, I will face the stigma too, having a dad with bipolar and being a person who has been on antidepressants over the years. Coincidentally, I did my work in therapy and beat an eating disorder and left an unhealthy marriage. I'm so freakin' emotionally well balanced it's just not even funny! :)   And I would give anything to have my body cooperate now, so I could just enjoy my life!

I think it's true that it's probably just the way it is that a person will be "required" to rule out emotional/psychological issues for a diagnosis.

It's so good to have each other here to "talk to" though. I think it helps a lot.

[Needhelp16]

That's just it.  It's a stigma, that's all. I have experience with alcoholism and bipolar disorder too.  I'm not looking to get into an argument of any kind, or to upset David in any way since he's so strongly opposed, but for an alcoholic, whose bipolar and has a severe panic disorder whom now is facing the possibility of a chronic disease needs some sort of professional counselling period. I don't care if you're gay, straight, black or white it's an obvious direction.

JJ is so right too.  Anybody who has been to a doc and have been told sx's are all in their head need to get that ruled out.  The only way that can be done is by seeing a "shrink"!

[SarahL2491]

JJ
sometimes in the states, the mention of having gone to a shrink in your records is a kiss of death, a stigma that never goes away regardless of the outcome, its like having a wrong diagnosis and no one will remove it!

that and those d....g people are sooooo expensive and want to drag you on for YEARS before saying yea or nay.......

but you make a good point!

[supermum_ms]

I was NOT in any way shape or size saying, implying or even thinking you should see a psych because it was all in your head, hypochondria, psychosomatic or your already dxd mental health issues!

My point was simply, that by getting your mental health assessed for possible causation, you would probably end up having a little peice of paper (diagnostic evidence) stating you'd been fully assessed and in their professional opinion, the sx's you are experiencing are not psychological but physiological and require further investingation.

There is a high proportion of people who end up dx with MS, who have had to get their mental health assessed along the diagnostic journey and have gotten that peice of paper! I had to, not because i've ever had a mental health issue or sx's of but because of my mother and brother's mental health issues, logic not and it su_cked big time, though i do love my peice of paper :o)  

I am sorry for your experiences unfortunately its a common story! Look my mum has bipolar and my brother is still an alcoholic and has peripheral neuropathy from pickling his brain for 30 yrs and on top of that he also has Asperger's, seriously I GET IT! You and I could probably debate psychiatry and mental health drugs untill the cows come home, but that isn't the point. btw I am not a particular fan of either to be honest but an issue you still have regardless of your feelings, is that your mental health is being blamed for what you are experiencing now.

The recommedation on getting assessed was not to get medications or therapy, thats your choice to do or not do, it was as i said "to get that turkey off the table" To be perfectly frank, I dont understand why anyone would choose not to find out, to know for sure that mental health as the cause isn't the right dx, if its not, it gets that theory off the table and under the circumstances its pretty important diagnostic evidence!  

Your choice is to face it head on or continue to avoid it on prinicpal, and what ever the out come, be comfortable with all the desicions you make.

Cheers..........JJ

ps cheers in Australia is a friendly bye bye :D

[SarahL2491]

I thought they made them stop the big bribe thingy?

I know when I was still in ER nursing, they made them stop doing it for us (darn it, I liked the lunches! ha ha

I'm with you, David, never trust a psychiatrist!  Especially with MS

[DavidinLexington]

So sorry I wrote with no paragraphs again.  I was trying not to do that.  Sorry if people had trouble reading.