Hi there, it has been five years since I posted here. I now live in Norway! I forgot about MS mostly! Is this MS?? what else do I need to have done?
Five years ago I posted about facial paralysis and some other neurological signs. Neuro team called it a clinically isolated incident and brain MRI and lumbar puncture was clear.
Now I have had another attack and it is pretty similar symptoms - left sided facial paralysis with no muscle weakness or problems with voluntary movements. The numbness was all over my head and left arm, also there was a patch on my side. Now I just have altered sensation on the left side of my head. When I touch it it feels slightly scratchy or weird but almost normal.
These are my permanent symptoms - The left side of my mouth goes down and has done since 2009. I am not sure why. Also at that time I developed a clonus in my right leg. That comes on when I get excited or nervous. The thing that will make it go absolutely crazy is if I sing in front of another person. It is like a jackhammer! I also get a big jerk/twitch in my neck about once a day, usually in the morning. Not sure why but that started in 2009 too. I also get loud single hiccups for no reason.
The last attack started with both a splitting headache and a facial numbness. I felt like the blood supply in my head was getting cut off from lying down. I couldn’t wake up until 2pm and rang the doctor, private doctor, A&E and my medical insurance company but they wouldn’t see me. The next day I saw my doctor who sent me to hospital. In hospital they started taking videos of me talking but took my vitals and eventually told me to go home as it wasn’t a stroke.
The next week they took a brain MRI but said since it had happened before they weren’t worried too much. The brain MRI had normal findings.
While this was happening I had more symptoms, tinnitis and visual snow. My whole body feels like an untuned tv. The snow, the tinnitis is wavering in pitch like the tv ‘crackle’ but higher, and my feet and legs tingle too. Tingling in my teeth is constant. While walking quickly I find the tingling really ramps up. I had 2 days of serious brain fog where I couldn’t remember how to use a bus stop, my instincts were leading me but I couldn’t work out how to finish anything. I found these symptoms worse when going to sleep and waking up. Sometimes at night I would laugh and laugh for no reason and then feel very sad and I remember feeling this the last time. I also laugh when I can’t remember a word and feel quite cheerful and euphoric most of the time. A lot of the time I feel unbalanced in bed, or with certain eye positions I feel movement. One night I had a period of 5 minutes where one eye just would not focus. It looked unfocused but not the same as without glasses, this was like looking through a dirty window. It eventually went back to normal. That was when I was having a lot of eye pain too. One time I saw triple. Also I have had some incontinence a few times but it has only been very tiny amounts?? is that an MS symptom?
My symptoms are a lot more noticeable when I exercise and sometimes I get the symptom days or weeks before when exercisng I get it normally, such as the tingly legs, tingly teeth and visual disturbances. A brisk walk is enough to bring it on.
I get a lot of headaches (for years) that come on in the afternoon and the headaches last for weeks or months. This is the pattern of tension headaches. Sometimes the headache becomes pounding if I bend over (bending neck forward) or put my head on a pillow, when I lie on my stomach (bending neck backward) there must be some really bad tension there but nothing seems to work to clear it. I also get slightly more numbness when very headachey or very upset.
The one thing that has never been done is a spinal MRI. I also have a lot of clunking in my neck when my neck is upright, I think it is a tendon that keeps snapping over a bone. I saw a chiropractor but he was no help at all. That started happening in january of this year.
I have also had some attacks of nerve pain in the chest. I was never able to find a cause. They come in bursts every few minutes but last less than a second. They are very painful and this is the worst symptom I have ever had. These attacks last about 6 weeks and I have had 3 or 4 of them. Running has brought them all on which makes me petrified of running long distance, however since it has been 3 years since my last attack I might try again.