I am at sort of a crossroads and wanting to get some opinions. I have anxiety and it has, over the years, caused a slew of neuro symptoms, but I could mostly attribute them to anxious times and they came and went quickly. (A little tingling here, a muscle twitch there), nothing that I was too worried about. I have now had 2 episodes that I have lost sensation in my bladder so a neuro said it would be a good idea to get MRI's to rule out MS. I agreed wholeheartedly. Now, upon thinking about it, these times have come at very stressful periods in my life, and have coincided with me starting psychiatric medication. I know that anticholinergic medications can have a strong effect on your bladder. The first "event" stopped very shortly after I stopped taking my medicine since I thought that was the cause. I was fine for 2 more years, until I started going through a rough patch and started up on meds again. I think my anxiety is playing in to it also, as in I am thinking way, way too much about my bladder sensation.
At any rate, I am now considering holding off, indefinitely, on the MRI's. I am worried that while I may not have MS, "something" will show up and it will be a waiting game of seeing if I get diagnosed or not. I have read numerous accounts of people who have had a spot or something show up on their MRI and even get misdiagnosed with MS and I worry that would happen to me. As my psychiatrist told me "Sometimes if you look for something, you will find it."
My fear is that if I do have MS, it will progress and get worse since I won't be treating it. Now, of course, if I had vision changes or a very specific symptom, like sudden weakness, tingling, etc, I would get checked out ASAP. I guess my fear is just that I could have MS and it would "silently" progress without causing me symptoms.
What are the chances something like that would happen? If I did have the disease, and it was progressing, is it fair to say that I would have very apparent flare ups? I don't want to go through the stress of a test that as of today, I don't think I need, but I want to be conservative, as well.
The first neuro I saw said that it would be very rare for MS to only affect my bladder since it would have to be such a microscopic lesion in "just" the right place. I admit there have been some other symptoms, but they were always when I was anxious about something, and I know anxiety can mimic a lot of MS symptoms. I have never really had anything that has lasted for more than a day, usually just something such as my hand falling asleep for a few minutes or some twitching in my leg for a little while. I should add that I have not had ANY of these symptoms while I was on anti-anxiety medication, which makes me think most of this is anxiety.
I guess I just want opinions on whether it would be safe to push off the MRI's to see if anything else develops. Truth be told, most people probably wouldn't even notice the little things I do with my body and the first neuro I saw was pretty confident that things were okay (passed my neuro exam with flying colors). Her attending doctor was a little more cautious, but she said he is just like that by nature.
Any suggestions? I would just hate to go through the MRI's and the stress of being told "we see something but it may be nothing so we will wait and test again in a year".