M S IS A WONDER TOME

[PROUDESTGRANNY]

by PROUDESTGRANNY, 18 hours ago
To: Anyone who can answer
I have been going numb all over my body and my left arm went totally numb during the night and at the same time I had terrible pains in my Heart area which I am still having at times. I went through a stress test however and I passed it.This all happened .over two weeks ago and my left arm has never come out of it. I have terrible complicated migraines also that make me paralyzed and blind so I thought it was the migraines doing it but the Dr. thinks it is very possible that I have M S.I go to a Neurologist on the 17th of January to find out for sure.I already had my Brain cat scan and it showed Brain damage from all of the 20+ years of bad migraines and the migraine strokes I have suffered in the past.The migraines have really stolen a lot of my memory from me.What I am wondering about is  when they check for M S does the Dr. do a Spinal Tap and also do they stick needles in your nerves to find out if a person has M S? I know this is what they did with my husband when they tested him for Parkinsons Disease and he said it was pure torture.I do live under and enormous amount of stress at all times.
Does stress make M S worse? Can it cause M S?

[SarahL2491]

I had the needles in the arm test and they tried to tell me I had carpel tunnel syndrome, which I don't have.........primary paniced and ordered neuro surgeon who said "bunk".......go figure

spinal tap is not truly definitive, it can or cannot help with Dx.  MRI unfortunately is not for those of us with pacemakers; we can't have them.

Keep your journal religiously and if you don't like your neuro, go to another one!  Good luck and stay in touch.  I have had symptoms since 2005 and am still awaiting Dx.
Sarah

[Lulu54]

Hi PG, I am a proud grandma, too.  

It is so troublesome to have all these problems and not have a name to put on it.  Unfortunately MS is a diagnosis of exclusion and it usually takes quite some time to work through all the other possibilities before MS is left as the only choice.

Your husband may have had a horrible EMG experience, but mine honestly was not too bad.  I would guess the pain level depends on the type of nerve and muscle damage that you have.  

Spinal taps sound awful and barbaric, but most people have no problem with one.  There are about 1 in 7 who have complications of headaches, but that also means 6 in 7 people have no problem at all.

The migraines sound horrible - I'm so sorry you suffer from those, and especially for so long.

We're here to answer any questions you might have - welcome again. Lulu
Your description of being numb all over doesn't quite fit the profile of an MS attack.  The demyelinated areas only affect one particular area and not the whole body.  It is also rare to have a symetrical attack for that same reason - it would take two identical lesions in two identical spots to cause the same symptoms on both sides of the body.

[jensequitur]

I think maybe you're thinking about the EMG, where they put electrodes into muscle tissue to check nerve conduction.

Maybe I have that name wrong!

But the first step to an MS diagnosis is a MRI.  They'll scan your brain for lesion activity.  If they find enough lesions that indicate MS, then you won't need any more testing - you'll have the diagnosis.  If they don't find enough lesions, then they may want to do a spinal tap.

If the spinal tap and the MRI are negative, and you're still having neurological symptoms, then other tests come into play like the visual evoked potential, where they flash black and white squares at you to see how your brain works.  There's optical coherence tomography, which looks at the retinal fibers of your eye.  Possibly the EMG, although I think a less invasive nerve conduction study is more likely.