Hi, I’m new here and this is my first post. I feel the need to apologise as I have a feeling this is going to follow a common theme for a first post.
Over the past half a year or so, I’ve been getting symptoms that seem to have MS as a commonality. Most notably, in February, when I also had a cold, I went for about three weeks going to work and then straight to bed as I was so tired. This culiminated on a memorable Friday when I lost my vision in both eyes for what felt like a couple of minutes on the Tube (for London-dwellers, I started losing it at Warren Street, and it returned when I was sitting on the platform at Oxford Circus). I went home and spent the rest of the following week in bed, sleeping most of the day and night. Before this, I went through a period of about a month where my eye would not stop twitching, ranging from a few times a day to a few times an hour.
Now, for about a month, my head has been having a really weird sensation that feels like sunburn, but when I touch it it feels more like bruising. This has been especially annoying as it is making my scalp itchy. Adding to this, I’ve been experiencing bladder problems - a sudden, desperate need to go to the toilet without much warning, and occasionally feeling a weird tightness in my chest when I breathe in.
Reading through this site when it said it was normal to feel like I’m being a hypochondriac is what made me want to post. I really don’t like going to the doctor (and he was quite dismissive of the fact that I had lost vision). I don’t feel like I can go to the doctor and just start listing everything, like I have done here, without sounding like I’ve spent too much time on Google. But I am anxious that, when it started with the eye twitch and I thought that MS was coming up as the typical google scare-result, it’s now coming up quite frequently.
If anyone could give me advice about whether I should wait to see if anything in particular comes up that is a sign I should go to my GP, or if the fact that these things aren’t happening together are a sign of something, I’d be very grateful. Thank you.
I think you should go and see your gp, this all could be nothing but better to always get checked. When I went to my gp first about my symptons he insisted that I get an optician appointment booked as soon as possible, I lost sight in one eye in my own garden, I cant imagine what it must be like to lose sight in both eyes and on the tube of all places!
Just wanted to take a moment to say thanks for posting. I was trying pluck up the courage to register and feeling a bit too unfocused to start reading through the site properly, and your comment about the site’s reassurances regarding feeling like a hypochondriac reassured me in turn.
The other thing I wanted to ask is can you see a different doctor (i.e. someone else in the practice)? My practice has three regular doctors: one is my designated GP and I would never bother going back to her after several dismissive responses to things that turned out to be rather serious; the second will respond to serious things but in a rather lacklustre way (e.g. writing a prescription but not spending much time asking about symptoms); the third is completely wonderful, asks questions, gets tests done, refers, and she quite possibly saved my life by taking symptoms seriously when others were suggesting that I was overreacting to IBS. So please try a different doctor if yours isn’t up to much: I suspect many GPs would be horrified to hear that your loss of vision was dismissed. Oh, and take a list of all your symptoms and give that to the doctor: it would be very hard for even the least proactive doctor to dismiss something if they have it in writing…
Anyway, not much to add except moral support - but you have that!
Anon & Clockwise, without boring you I hear your frustrations very clearly, over a 3 year period I visited my G.p surgery at least twice every 2-3 months seeing 3 different doctors with a lot of M.S symptoms which I didn’t know back then, I was sent for C.T scans,eye tests,orthapedics, counselling everything but an MRI scan. I was diagnosed as having depression/stress as a busy mum of 4, 2 of which have Autism a full time job & 2 failed marriages. I finally asked the G.p receptionist which G.p had more experience or expertise in gait(bones) & or neuro problems & they named that g.p in the same practice. I finally got a referral for a neurologist . Neurologist was dismayed that I hadn’t had MRI till now given all the symptoms he booked me in the very next day. Conclusion after all the tests Jan of this year was primary progressive MS symptoms shown 8 years prior to diagnosis.
We are just a number with g.ps, you are more important than that, make yourself heard, take that list of symptoms to g.p maybe an idea to get double appt.
Pollypocket - You very far from bored me. Sounds soooo familiar. I just hope that my referral to the neurologist (as of yesterday) leads to an MRI. What’s so annoying is that I had an MRI for my abdomen and hips about a year ago (never-identified hip and back pains), and the noise of it was horrendous (left me with paralysis for about half an hour and mobility issues for a couple of days). I keep thinking if only they’d done the whole body all in one go. All these symptoms dotting around the body are frustrating and it sometimes feels like a wild goose chase. That said, without an MRI, I can’t know one way or the other, so this could all still be something else entirely.
When I have a bit more energy I’ll post my own cinema-worthy story (ahem!!), but for now just thank you.
Thanks all for advice and support. I will make arrangements with the GP, I’ll go to a new one anyway (I recently moved down here so I’ll have to register, first). I’m going to try to keep calm and open minded about it all as, as some of you have said, this could be anything.
Also, thanks to Janet who repleid to the other thread which I think was accidently made when I posted this! I’m going to try to strike a balance between being concerned about the symptoms without seeming like I’ve made up my mind.
Good idea. I hope you have better luck this time with getting a good GP. Your previous one sounds like a dead loss. As someone else suggested, it might be an idea to go to an Optometrist as well and tell them what happened about your vision and let them examine your eyes.