does this sound like ms

[woodrow256]

First event was 2005. I was in the military. I started feeling bad so i went to sick call. My symptoms were vertigo and ear pain. For three months it persisted.  They did a ct scan( normal) then sent me to ENT. After all the tests the dr said i had nerve damage in my ears and that if it lasted i would be medically discharged for a balance disorder. I learned to balance again the best i could. The symptoms slowly faded. Still have days where it feels like and ice pick is jammed in my ear.

Summer 2008 was my first experience with heat intolerance. I was outside in the alabama heat doing some yardwork. I knew i was getting too hot so i kept cooling off in a pool. Long story short i thought i had heat stroke. I never went to the dr about it. I was in the bed for about a week. I recovered but never was right in the heat again. I get weak, dizzy, and if a wait too long nauseous. I cool down, it goes away. Most of the time.

2009. One night i sat up in bed to go to the bathroom. Like a sit up. Something happened, i had an awful jolt through my whole body and immediately fell back on my pillow. I could barely move my neck. I had painful spasms/ lightning going diagonal across my back to my hip. I had an mri of my cervical spine. Nothing. I have a feeling they were looking for pinched nerves or bulging disks, not lesions. No contrast either. No neck structure issues. I had numbness and radiating pain in both arms. Mostly right side. Eventually this too faded and away with no known cause.

2011. I had bad insomnia one night. Then lost vision in both eyes. My left eye came back almost instantly, ole righty took about five minutes to return. My vision was double in my right eye. I was seeing bright flashes when i looked to the sides, so i went to pc dr. I failed his test where you follow the light with your eyes. Enter my first neurologist. He thought optic neuritis. Mri without contrast and sent me to an eye doctor. Nothing on mri, very thorough eye exam showed thinning of my optic nerve. I had 20/10 vision my whole life but my vision went downhill quick over the next year. Now i have glasses. I get double vision if i try to read looking up or down. I see a bubble in the center of vision sometimes. The neurologist said i should check up in a year to make sure i dont have ms.

MS went in one ear and out the other. Yea right, i dont have MS. I thought he was a quack.

2013. Spring. I started having horrible fatigue. I would wake up exhausted. I still have it now. Everything just takes so much energy to do now. If i have a good day, ill go outside and work around the house. Ill overdo it. Then im in the bed for 2 days recovering any energy i can. I judge tasks in energy required now. Its way worse in the summer time. I function ok enough in the winter. Its like im a different person.

2014. July. I started having action tremor. I miss light switches. Food falls off my fork if im not careful. Thats when it sunk in that my past experiences could be MS. Its in both arms, right side worse like everything else. Also at the same time i started having muscle twitches all over my body. Mostly my left leg, but have occured almost everywhere at some point.

It took me until a few weeks ago to get the VA(veterans administration) to take me serious. I got lucky that my VA eye dr was concerned enough about my story to refer me to neurology. My primary dr turned me down. They gave me a brain MRI with/without contrast before my first neurology appointment. It was clean. I have serious doubts to whether the power of the MRI was good enough. My neuro seemed very familiar with my story. Ive read that veterans have high occurrence of MS. She said sounds like MS to her. So ive got a lumbar puncture, evoked potential, and spine MRI ordered.

I get the results at my next appointment in April. Ive seen the results of all the blood test online already. Marginally high blood calcium and folate was really high.  B12 was 600 something. I take b12 daily so it was skewd, possibly. Nothing noticeably off about my white blood counts. ANA was negative. Im so scared that everything will come back normal or something worse than MS like ALS or neurosarcoid. Im 30 years ugly and im a male. I know how hard it can be to read solid blocks of text so i tried to break it up. Let me know your opinions please. I also need somebody to talk to about all this because i dont want to worry my family for no reason. Something is definitely wrong with my body. Id just rather have a diagnosis before i tell anybody.

They already wonder why i dont go around them. At my moms for Christmas i kept losing my balance, and i had trouble manipulating small items with my hands. They all were looking at me weird, like i was drunk. I feel like an idiot when i try to count out money at the store. Its like im in slow motion because my brain is trying to count faster than my fingers can go. I have my wife count money out in public now.

At the neuro, she found numb places in both hands. I think i failed the eye follow light test too. She did it over and over as to make sure it wasnt an once off anomaly. Ill stop rambling now. Im not shy, so any questions ill gladly answer.

[woodrow256]

Ill find out monday what power the MRI machine is.  I have evoked potentials test then. If i can remember to check while im there. My memory is very crappy. A few other oddities that i forgot to mention... My sense of smell is greatly diminished. I havnt felt thirsty in at least 2 years. I get dehydrated because of it. My bowels lock up to the point where laxitives barely work. I cant feel that i have to pee, until it hurts sometimes. The pain will last for hours afterward. It feels like my bladder is being stabbed.

I get really odd sensations, like im being touched, vibrations, and heat. The vibrations happen in my left thigh, it can change to a numb/heat feel. My feet sometimes wont raise up like they're weak. Ive had numbness in my right hip that make it damn near impossible to walk. The only things i smell strongly are foul smells, like smoke, cigarette smoke, or noxious chemical smells. The smells are intrusive and im the only person around smelling them.

The first few times that i smelled smoke, i was hard to convince that it wasnt real. I looked at every inch of my house for fire. Thanks for replying.

[supermum_ms]

Hi Woodrow, welcome to our little MS community.

There definitely sounds like something MSish is going on, not sure if MS is going to be it though, but you've definitely rung 'some' of the bells. Going on 10 years should of produced some MRI lesion evidence, that's a puzzle though you might be right about the MRI strength being low, was the MRI a 1.5T or a 3T and have you got copies?

Your clinical signs are abnormal, so MS would have to be high up on your list of possible causation but keep in mind there are other conditions besides MS and you'll have a much better idea of what it likely is, after you've had the lumbar puncture, evoked potential, and spine MRI etc......BREATH!

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

PS. We have a few ex military jumping through the VA hoops, i hope they see you and offer some advice from the VA enlightened.... (hint hint guys and dolls :D)