Really Worried :(

[weakling]

I will openly admit here that I have quite a bit of health anxiety and am prone to freaking out about medical conditions.
I've had medical problems for several months now and am concerned that maybe I have MS and am quite scared about it. Can anyone comment on these symptoms?

I'm a 24 year old male and have suffered from a very persistent fatigue and muscle weakness since January. By March I developed aches and pains all over my body. In April I was found to have severe vitamin D deficiency (10ng/ml) and began treatment. Low vitamin d is associated with weakness and chronic fatigue so I assumed this was the cause. The muscle aches slowly faded away by June. The muscle weakness and fatigue are almost always there but every once in a while the symptoms will decrease for a week or so. Recently I've been experiencing a little bit more frequent reductions in symptoms. This month  I was also found to have an unusually low testosterone level for my age which my doctor also thinks is likely causing my symptoms. I have not yet begun any kind of treatment for that. My primary care doctor then remarked that she does not think my symptoms fit the description of MS. My fatigue can often be severe enough to be debilitating and has strongly impacted my work performance. The weakness comes and goes, but has always been symmetrical, it doesn't feel neurological. Either all of the muscles are weak and tired or nothing is weak at all. This has been the case for months. I had attributed this to vitamin d deficiency induced muscle atrophy (or the low testosterone).

However in the last week I started to develop severe nausea and occasional abdominal pain to the point where I could eat almost nothing. This did happen after I ate some produce that might have been contaminated, but I am unsure of that. A day or so after I developed a strange headache that I would describe as a silent migraine. It rendered me pretty much useless, I felt sensitive to lights and had an almost mental fog. I also began to experience tingling, muscle twitching, pins and needles and sensations of numbness all over my body. I have also noticed that I have had vertigo for a few days that seemed to slightly effect my balance. I also noticed that I had an increased sensation/urge to urinate. I had always kind of urinated more frequently than the average person but it never really bothered me much, but this was a bit unusual. I'm not sure if its a neurological thing or is related to the weird digestive symptoms.

The weird headache and the vertigo are gone now but the tingling and urge to urinate are still happening (for a total of 48-72 hours now) and really worrying me. I know I have been very anxious and really stressed so I'm not sure if that is causing some of these symptoms. The vertigo and tingling crap haven't even been going on for a week yet so I am just hoping they go away.

I told my doctor about what is going on and he still doesn't think it sounds like MS though he mentioned you can ever really ever rule out MS. I made the stupid mistake about googling these symptoms and read that people with MS also experience a lot of fatigue, weakness (though its not perfectly symmetrical like in my case) and tingling/needle sensations along with bladder symptoms.

Can anyone here please give me your opinion on if these symptoms sound like MS and how they compare to your symptoms?

[Lermentov]

Hello,
          Wow. I am going through exactly what you are going through for the past 2.5 yrs with no answers. I am 35 yrs old male . Only definite findings were Low Vit D ,so stated 2000IU per day and Low testosterone (Getting shots every other week). Testosternone shots help eliminate the symptoms completely some times earlier and lately it has stopped working even though last week's blood test showed that my T levels are too high(Getting too much) and I still am fatiugued, muscle ache ,muscle burning and weakness, loss of appetite. Seen lots and lots of specialists, (GP, Endo, Neuro,Rhuem,Infectious disease, GI, Allergist etc ) and spent lots of money with no answers.Trying to get an appointment with LLMD in Indianapolis area.Felt completely symptom free for 5 months last year with out T-shots but only on Cymbalta. So I am really confused it I am struggling with real illness are some Psycologcal manifestation. Hard to tell ,
Regards
Ler

[LoveMyBostons]

Just wanted to pop in and say I'm sorry for your troubles. I hope you find out what's causing your symptoms. My advice - don't give up until you get the answers. My docs kept telling me I had one thing but I knew deep down I had MS. It took over six months of testing and occupational therapy but it turns out I was right. So keep asking questions, keep trying to find answers. Good luck!  

[weakling]

Also my Sed rate and CRP are very low, which makes lymes very unlikely since those tests almost always come out high in lymes disease patients.

[weakling]

Thanks for your response. I live in an urban area and rarely travel much. My doctor asked me if I go outdoors much but since I do not, he does not think I would have lymes disease.

I also think the GI and neuro stuff  may be unrelated or temporary. The GI symptoms are now entirely gone, the tingling and unusual sensations are almost entirely gone too. The bladder thing is hugely improved as well, but some slight issues still there. I think these symptoms are probably unrelated to my chronic symptoms of fatigue and weakness since those have lasted so much longer and these have been more acute.

The fatigue and weakness have also been at their mildest in a long time and some days I feel completely normal. This has been quite pleasant for me since I have suffered for months with debilitating fatigue now. Recently I have experienced significant improvements in productivity, exercise and general well being.The vitamin D deficiency easily explains chronic fatigue and weakness (and the body aching I had earlier which has now resolved 2 months after vitamin d supplementation). However the weird rollercoastering of symptoms doesn't make too much sense to me.

Anecdotal evidence from the vitamin d forum here (and others) suggests that many other people faced a similar pattern of recovery where they would experience good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks and eventually longer and longer periods of time where they feel better until they simply recover. I have not seen any such information in any medical literature however, though most sources say I need no less than 6 months to recover from vitamin d induced weakness and fatigue.

For now it seems I am continuing to improve very gradually. I have good weeks and bad weeks but the over trend seems to point to improvement. Hopefully it continues.

[Ricobord]

One possibility for you is Lyme Disease.  I don't know where you live or travel, so I don't know if it is a possibility, but it can cause tingling, vision issues, low Vit D, low Vit B12, low magnesium (which rarely shows up on a blood test), too low or too high hormone levels, numbness, bladder issues, headaches, muscle weakness, stomach pain, nausea, dizzyness, brain fog, and fatigue.  Because you have so many neuro and GI symptoms, you could also have Bartonella, a fairly common coinfection of Lyme. It can cause neuro and neuropsychiatric symptoms, especially anxiety.  I have both infections and I have had the same symptoms you describe (except for the low testosterone..I had wild female hormone swings instead).

There is a symptom list in here that might be helpful for you.
http://www.ilads.org/lyme_disease/B_guidelines_12_17_08.pdf

You are welcome to come post on the Lyme Disease forum to get others' perspectives.

[weakling]

What you say does make sense supermum, I think I was letting the anxiety really get to me. I've just been feeling awful for so long now that I've started to worry about something more serious being wrong with me.

I've had fatigue and muscle weakness for months and just very recently this all body tingling. I talked to my doctor about this issue and she assured me that the muscle weakness I have (evenly distributed over all my muscles but most significant in the proximal muscles) does not fit the weakness caused by MS at all but instead is consistent with my diagnosis of very low vitamin D. My doctor also repeated what you said about the tingling. It does make sense that MS couldn't cause an acute onset of tingling, burning and numbing sensations all over the body. He assured me that the weakness and fatigue are the result of low Vitamin D, low testosterone (which thankfully has been improving on its own) and my constant anxiety.

I turned out to not have any UTI, but my doctor thinks the bladder discomfort should resolve itself.

Thanks for taking the time to give me your opinion on this issue.

[supermum_ms]

If you think about it, your actually terrified because your anxiety is generating your fear, your fear is being fulled by assuming your issues are something different to what you know, and your googling has put MS in the forfront of your mind, which has also been fueling your fears. Your anxiety is building and will probably continue to build, until you take stock of the biggest issue you have at this moment in time. Your anxiety is not going to fix its self, so please speak to your dr about how anxious you are.

What tingling associated with MS doesn't do is move around, it doesn't spread over the body or limb, it doesn't happen in this limb today & adds this limb tomorrow, or only happen peripherally. It doesn't typically present in both sides of the body or cross over the body and it definitely doesn't happen 'all over' the body at once, it just can't do that.

In MS when demylination is occuring, so a scar is made (technically its called a lesion) it will 'only' effect some of the body, and 'only' the area that that part of the brain controls, not even the entire area that part of the brain controls. In MS tingling, it doen't even necessarily happen in an entire body part, its patchie, in splotches or odd areas, eg an MSer experiencing tingles may only feel tingles in half their foot, with the other half having normal sensations.

Its unlikely your uinary issues are connected to MS, from my understanding of uniary issuse in male pwMS, the issue is from lack of feeling and then having accidents from not being able to tell if they have emptied their bladder. Also if the other sx you though were MS are excluded from the possibility, its much more likely that all your sx are not MS. Its reasonable to conclude a simpler explanation, eg UTI which if it is, you probably do need to see your dr about.

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

[weakling]

Thanks for the response supermum,

The thing that is really scaring me right now is the frequent urge to urinate. Just feels like I have urine at the base of the urethra (sorry for too much info).
Even after I urinate it feels a bit uncomfortable. The fact that this happened at the sametime as the random occasional tingling that is going on all over my body is really worrying me into thinking this is something neurological. I heard people with MS can have trouble with their bladder.

I know whatever it is that I ate caused me all the abdominal pain and severe nausea but I don't think it could cause urinary problems or give me a UTI. Ugh I'm just worrying myself to death now :(

Does tingling with MS present itself on a few areas of the body at a time or do they just appear all over the body at once? I'm having them all over my body at once.

About the low vitamin d, after 3 months of supplementation I'm no longer deficient but the doc told me it will take a minimum of 6 months before I can regain all my physical strength. I have been eating very healthy and exercising as much as I can and I certainly have been feeling better (at least in terms of fatigue and weakness). But these new symptoms are terrifying.

[supermum_ms]

Hi and welcome to our MS community.

I would have to agree with your dr, your sx's do not sound like MS. One of the biggest issues with googling MS symptoms (sx's) is that the lists do not diffientiate in anyway eg google foot tingling, which can just as easily be from the type of shoes they wear to a genuine sx of a medical condition like MS. There is a lot more to it than the label, its not just about the commonality of sx, its the way they present, behave etc that are possibly even more relivant when it come to MS.

Generally its a good idea to get what you do know is wrong with you sorted out first, learn what it means to have low testesterone, vit d, your diet, life style and fitness both mentally and physically, it can also be tweeked to get you at your optimal level of wellness, none it can hurt and it should actually all help you in the long run.

Cheers.........JJ