I was diagnosed in 2000 and was living in Indonesia. I was sent to Singapore, which is a huge centre for medical excellence and had an MRI the next morning and a diagnosis by 2 in the afternoon. Not quite what I was expecting, but I knew something was up, as they pulled me out after 15 minutes and got me to sign for gadolinium contrast. I had all the tests - evoked potentials at a different hospital which showed up some weird results. The person doing the tests asked me how I was still walking as there was little nerve conduction in my right leg. I am still walking. I had 3 days of steroid infusions and a tailoff oral dose (thank goodness that’s changed) and just before we returned home, they did a lumbar puncture. The hospital in Singapore was just off Orchard Road, so we went out and bought some books and I was reading one when the doctor arrived to do the lumbar puncture. I’d never met him before and the first thing he said was ‘oh, you’re reading about your illness. You want to know more than your doctor eh?’ I was pretty speechless, but MS is very, very rare in SE Asia and he probably didn’t know much about it. So he did the puncture and we went home and then, a couple of days later (or so) I got the headache from hell. Now - I’d have here to ask about this - or get someone to ask, as I couldn’t raise my head. It took a few days to go, but I really thought I was going to die. In the end, yes, I had oligoclonal bands and yes, I had RRMS. Well, it was the answer to a lot of odd symptoms.
Hi Strudders! I had an LP done too and was positive for oligoclonal bands, although it hasn’t yet led to an MS diagnosis. I had an MRI done after my first symptoms in June 2009 which showed one lesion in my spine, after I had another ‘relapse’ in May 2010 I had another MRI done which showed no change, from then until now my neuro has been trying to get a definite diagnosis for me. He referred me to a rheumatologist to rule out everything else which they did, I had visual evoked potentials done which were normal and that’s when he told me he needed the LP done. Although I got a positive result he still can’t/won’t diagnose MS because I have no lesions in my brain (although I haven’t had another MRI done) he has diagnosed ‘recurrent myelitis’ for the moment. Lynn x