I’m a 39 years old male from Spain in the process of being diagnosed of MS.
It all started 3 weeks ago, I woke up in the morning and felt a bit dizzy and with double vision when looking at the sides. Had also pain in my neck but i thought it was just a pinched nerv in my cervicals, as I work with computers like 10 hours per day, and didn’t pay a lot of attention to it.
The following day I was feeling the same, so I decided to go to the doctor. They also initially thought on a cervical contracture, did an X ray and found everything fine, so to prevent, sent me both to the neurologist and the ophthalmologist.
The ophthalmologist said everything looked good on my eyes but an small nigstam in my right eye, that was causing the double vision when looking at the sides, but that it had a neurological cause, not in the eye itself.
The neurologist performed some tests on me, like walking in one line, touching my nose and his finger etc and all looked fine. Then I also told him that for the last two months I was feeling something weird when looking down, like feeling an electric shock going down my spine to the hips, sometimes until the feet or hands.
He then said he wanted to perform on me an MRI with contrast. I did at the next day and the result was nothing really evident, but some hints of an initial demyelination.
When I searched for than in the net plus the two symptoms, the nigstam and the electric shock when looking down, that now I know it’s named Lhermitte sign, everything pointed to MS information sites and forums. I asked the neurologist directly about MS and he told me that might be it but won’t say it until totally sure.
Then I had a business trip for a week, so he gave me prednisone going from high dose the first days to lower it in the last ones. It worked and the eye issue is almost gone now but the Lhermitte feeling is still there. I was running 10k this morning an at the end of it i was feeling it a lot when looking down.
Next Monday i’m going to have a lumbar puncture and the following test will be the Evoked Potentials, to finally know if it’s MS or not but… it seems it is.
I have been tying things out and thinking back in time, past summer i also felt numbness in my chest and stomach for like 3 weeks and it was gone by itself. Also from time to time i feel a vibration like if i had my cell phone in the trousers pocket, in fact sometimes I even look there and then I see it’s not, the phone is on the table for example.
I still feel a bit shocked, life was great, very good job, kids, wife, etc and then boom. Sometimes i want to just accept it and feel confident i can live with it and keep fighting and others i feel scared, specially for my family as i have 2 kids and a wife that totally depend from me economically and if i end blind and or tetraplegic… anyway i have read that is not always the end of all MS, but that there are a lot of different types and not all them are that aggressive.