Hi everyone,
I’m on here and making this post kind of as a method to get all the thoughts swimming around in my head out and in order, and maybe to get some advice and ressurance. This might get long so I apologise but thank you in advance for reading it.
I am a 27 year old F. For the past few years I’ve had random dizzy spells that would come and go. They’d happen, I’d think “that was weird,” then go away and not happen again for a few weeks. I thought that standing up too quick or flickering lights were causing them.
Recently, about a month ago, I developed shingles. Nothing particularly weird about that except my partner had had them a few months before, seemed oddly coincidental that two young people would get shingles in the same household within a short space of time but it didn’t really matter, I recovered quickly. When I had the shingles, I started noticing odd symptoms that gradually increased in severity. The dizziness I had before was back and happened more frequently and without any trigger. My left arm started getting weird tight “sharp ache” pains, starting at the elbow then eventually all the way from my shoulder to my fingers. My arm then began feeling “wrong,” it would get a numb or “not there” feeling, sort of like the feeling when you have been sleeping on your arm but without any pins and needles.
The shingles have gone, but these symptoms are still here and getting worse. I feel dizzy and spaced out almost constantly. My left arm feels like the connection to by brain keeps dropping out. It gets random pains all the time. My right arm is starting to show the same thing, and my knees are starting to get the same pain. It takes extra effort to move my limbs, they feel heavier than they used to, or that I have to “try more” to get them to do something. When i’m driving, my legs feel really heavy and I finding it harder to move the clutch pedal as finely. My speech and thinking are slower and I think I sound a little bit slurred, or fumbling over my words.
Of course, I went to the doctor as soon as I realised the shingles were gone but these symptoms were still getting worse. Thankfully she has taken me seriously and scheduled a blood test and an MRI. The blood test came back normal, bt the MRI is still not until April.
I have done that thing of looking up my symptoms and what keeps showing up is MS. I really, really do not want to have MS (nobody does) and am desperately clinging to the hope that these symptoms are a holdover from the shingles and will go away on their own, but every day I get worse and more convinced that it is MS, I have holes in my brain, they’re getting bigger and I won’t even know for sure until April. And that every day I don’t have medicine is going to mess me up.
I am so, so scared and worried that i’m getting worse too fast and that by the time April comes I will be in a state I can’t come back from. That I might not be safe to drive and not be able to go to work. Or, even, that I get the MRI and it’s something even worse than MS like a brain tumour.
Sorry that just seems horrendously depressing when I know you are all fighting your own battles. I’m just very scared and don’t know who to talk to about it.
I have already called my doctor and told her I feel like i’m getting worse quickly and I was worried about waiting til April for the MRI. She said that she’ll try to get my a sooner neurology appointment but she can’t promise anything. And that if I really get bad go to A&E (???)
If i’m going to have this I just wish I could start taking medicine now before its too late and I might get permanent damage in my brain. At least if I started sooner I might have a chance to stop some of this.
I bet everyone feels this way in the same position, its just the not knowing for sure but knowing that something is deeply wrong and feeling so helpless.
So yeah thats it. Sorry guys. Thanks for reading it and if anyone has any thoughts of what I can do please let me know. I have even thought about spending what little I have to get a private MRI I am that worried.