This may not be your problem but I am asking all persons with these symptoms to go to the mirror and check their mouths. If you have any silver fillings please google"Symptoms of mercury fillings" and "Dental Amalgam Mercury Syndrome"
good luck.
Sounds a lot like Pseudotumor Cerebrei to me. I struggled with it for a little over a year, but thankfully have been relatively symptom free for the last couple years. Although, I do have lots of follow up dr appts. The thing that helped me the most was chiropractic adjustments to my neck along with some massage. It is a problem that predominately hits overweight women of child bearing age. I was told it is not life threatening, however, can seriously impair vision if left untreated. I also had one neurologist tell me that "it generally runs its course in about a year or so".
Twin2,
I hope you don't have MS and glad your symptoms better fit pseudotumor. There is a posting I just came across near the very bottom of the Neurology and Neurosurgery Forum where one of the CCF doctors responds to a person (Riley70)--date of posting is 08/22--regarding pseudotumor cerebri symptoms, MS, as well as optic nerve involvement in pseudotumor cerebri. You might want to read it, as it sounds similar to what you are experiencing. Good luck.
I've had an orbital eye MRI, however that does not capture the entire brain. It only shows the front view(i.e. eyes, sinus etc). I did look up the psuedotumors on various sites today and I fit the classic description! When I looked at the MS symptoms, I didn't feel like it fit my problems.
I just found this info from a Mayo website.
Approximately 15% of those with MS present with optic neuritis (first symptom). [My cousin has MS and that was her first symptom. She went to an ophthalmologist, who dxd ON, he sent her to a neurologist who did an MRI-brain and dxd MS.]
69% of those who have a single episode of optic neuritis develop MS within 14 years.
But as I said, there are other causes of optic neuritis besides MS and some people have ON and never develop MS.
I don't know anything about pseudotumors, so I won't speak to that.
As far as MS goes, yes you can have numbness and lose function in a limb/limbs, but that doesn't have to be the first symptom-presenting symptom-and could be something that happens years after the onset of initial symptoms. I don't know that your other symtpoms sound much like MS (although MS has a multitude of symptoms and is highly variable), but a lot of people that have optic neuritis also have or eventually develop MS down the road. But not everyone, as there are other causes. Maybe your ophthalmologist is trying to rule out/in a couple different things by doing the lumbar puncture, the pseudotumor and/or MS. Did you have an MRI of your brain done also? Usually a brain MRI is done before a LP when looking for MS, but maybe the LP better diagnoses the pseudotumor, which I know nothing about.