Hey I’m new to all this, didn’t really know much of anything about MS until the start of this year.
I have crohns disease, bowel perforated when I was 18 ended up with a ileostomy bag until I was around 21 then I got it reversed.
At the end of last year around Autumn I noticed my thinking was becoming really foggy. Kept getting anxious for no real apparent reason. One day in September my whole left side went numb and I began hyperventilating ended up just taking painkillers and going to sleep, I was convinced I had a mini stroke. Everything seemed okay the next day so I just went about my daily routine.
Spoke to my gp about my symptoms he just kept recommending anti-depressants like fluoxetine never really took me serious thought I was just a nervous wreck I think. He told me my folic acid was low prescribed me some of those.
Around December or the beginning of January I walked into the wrong tenement block I’ve been living in since September took me a good minute to realise it wasn’t my close. I got two streets I know really well mixed up on one occasion. Out of the blue I was hit with one of the worst migraines I’ve ever experienced I was convinced I was dying, felt like going to hospital but I didn’t I just took two painkillers and went to sleep. I keep blanking on names that I know I know, like the cast of Breaking Bad, as silly as it sounds. People’s surnames.
I began to notice that for the past few months in low light my eye sight is horrendous. I had never noticed any issues before but there was definitely a deteriation. Go to my GP explain my symptoms he tells me my crohns specialist wrote to him in September telling him I should have been getting vitamin b12 shots but he didn’t see it because it was at the bottom of the letter???
After six b12 injections still don’t feel myself. I go back and my GP has pawned me off to a different doctor. I get prescribed diazepam don’t think they’re helping me much so I don’t continue taking them. End up in hospital due to migraine, pains in my head the hospital doctor is quite rude to me basically puts it all down to painkiller use for crohns. I get sent for a MRI as a outpatient. Puts me on amitriptyline which I took for about a month then weaned myself off last week just because I don’t think it helped any with the brainfog.
Convinced I’m just going crazy and the MRI will probably come back fine I just stay quiet put up with the general feeling of being unwell and not quite myself. I get the MRI and around a week later my whole left side goes numb again face feels like I’ve had a dental injection. Convinced it’s a ministroke I end up going to A + E.
At the hospital they tell me there were some white spots in my MRI unusual for somebody my age. I begin googling my symptoms and illnesses connected to B12 stumble upon all of the information for MS. Wound up asking the doctor point blank could this be MS? and he paused for a moment before saying we can’t rule it out but he has to refer me to a neurologist because they’re the experts on it and for all he knows the MRI is fine.
Had a flashback to being 16-17 and my crohns specialist at that time putting me on a medication called Methotrexate, after around the 7th injection I remember being told the medication may cause MS but not to worry because I’m young and it would be way in the future when I’m old. There’s a chance it wasn’t methotrexate but it was definitely one of the many crohns medications that was given to me.
Believe it or not I’m a writer, I’m sure it would be hard to tell after this garbled mess but I just need to get it out. I’m convinced when I’m out with people they can tell I’m a little bit slower, not as quick as I was. Keep falling into really deep daydreams for milliseconds at a time then convincing myself I twitched or made a weird noise. I keep reading words wrong and waking up seeing like black squiggles that are there until I get out of bed.
I’m just really really terrified and defeated at the moment and had to get this out. Thanks in advance to anybody who takes the time to read it.