I’ve been feeling funny the last few days. I know I’m lucky I can wAlk at all but my legs don’t seem like thru want to go in the same direction. It’s like the muscles are tight all over but also weak. Since my first relapse I literally have no hop in the right side at all can’t get a 1cm off the ground my left was unaffected. At Xmas the left side lost some of it’s hop and wAs wobbly. But the last few days even since I saw the neuro I can hop even less is this because of stiffness or because of a relapse stopping the muscles working and lack of strength. When I get up in the morning even my ribs feel funny but I can’t stretch them out. Yesterday I had a stabbing headache but not like a headache. Every 20 minutes felt like someone hit my head with a pick axe then disappear for 20 minutes again this lasted a few hours. Then I was away with a friend and on the way home felt dizzy and sick this has passed this morning. May be a bug. This knowing when things a relapse is a nightmare x Em
Hi Em,
Hard to tell. If it came on suddenly, it’s more likely to be a relapse. Unless your guess is right that you had a bug? Infections sometimes trigger a flare-up of symptoms that could be mistaken for a relapse.
But I always have both stiffness and weakness these days, even when I’m not relapsing. In fact, I think this began well before I had my first actual relapse - or at least, any that I was aware of. My calf muscles have been getting tighter for years. I went to a sports physio literally years before diagnosis, and he said my calf muscles were the tightest he’d ever seen, and asked whether I’d been ill at all. I hadn’t, that I knew of, so found it a very strange question, and didn’t know what he was talking about. I was quite upset to think there was anything extreme about the state of my muscles, as I’d always considered myself in reasonable good health. But the penny still didn’t drop that it might be anything I should go to the doctor about. I suppose the physio didn’t feel it was his place to spell it out to me in so many words, or tell me to see a doctor, but looking back, I think he must have suspected MS, or something similar. Hence the: “What’s this? Have you been ill?”-type questions.
I think he realised something was amiss well before anybody in the NHS. I had been to the doctor before about miscellaneous stuff, but none of it was ever linked as part of an overall pattern of ill health, and I was even told my foot and leg problems were down to “silly shoes”, which was crazy, as I’d never, ever worn silly shoes, except maybe once or twice at parties, when I was in my teens.
So anyway, even though I’m diagnosed as relapsing remitting, I’m convinced it’s not just during relapses stuff happens, and I’ve been getting subtly worse for years.
Yes, I wake up with the bruised ribs thing, as well, and that’s even after retiring with a heavy dose of baclofen, AND diazepam, these days. 
I always wake up feeling as if I’ve recently had an accident, or run a marathon, or both!
Tina
x