Optic neuritis amongst other weird symptoms, worried

Hello! Where do I start?? I am usually a fit, busy, working mum of 3. In late feb I became ill. It started with feeling extremely tired, swollen glands, aching joints and dizziness. I went to my gp who did some bloods. Turned out I was severely vitamin D deficient. Started taking high dose vit D, within 2 weeks, felt mentally a bit foggy, couldn’t remember things I’d usually recall in seconds. Felt off balance and weak too. Back to gp and referred to neuro. Neuro said everything looked reassuringly normal but booked me for mri scan. A couple of weeks later, my eyes felt extremely dry and one was a bit blurry. I went to my local opticians where i failed the visual fields test in my left eye. Said there were points missing in the left temporal field. They wrote a letter to my gp for a referral to opthmalogist and neuro was informed. My eye deteriorated for about two weeks and has been like this now for 5 weeks. I had the mri brain scan done on Monday. Took 9 mins and no dye. Since Friday I’ve had pins and needles in my feet and hands plus feels like something is affecting the circulation, kind of cold feeling. Previously the palms of my hand had felt a burning sensation, usually after a long day at work, but usually settled within a few days to a week. Sorry for the long post, but is it always such a long process to find out if you have ms? Not sure if I’m anxious over the eye problem and stress causing other symptoms or not? Is there any indication from having the scan without the need for dye that maybe it was clear? So many questions and months of no answers. Help??! Any advice or experience would be greatly appreciated. The neurologist seemed to think viral infection such as glandular fever might have been the cause. Although this was before the start of the eye problem.

It sounds like an MS episode to me. One of my very early episodes had me waking up with double vision, which lasted about 3 weeks and then remitted. More recently I have developed really dry eyes which I had checked out by the Opthamologist and again when I had my annual retinopathy eye test. Both clinicians commented on the fact that the eyes were dry, but that the tear ducts were working but just not pushing the tears out into the eyes. The view from my MS nurse was that it might be MS related but it might be a side effect of the medication that I am on. One of the darned frustrating things with MS is that there is no “standard” as to how it hits you, everyone is different and the symptoms with a relapse can have no pattern whatsoever. Diagnosis, apart from an MRI scan showing damage to the spinal cord, isnt a precise science and lends itself more to balance of probabilities with the promise that time will help form a clearer picture. The one thing that you have to keep in your mind is that you are the expert at what your body is telling you and there are some really useful symptom help sheets on this site that you could use by way of a checklist to help “join up” what at first sight may appear to be totally unrelated issues, the join being MS.

Just keep with it, MS is unfortunately a marathon rather than a sprint, but you will get there!

Good luck

JC