I have optical neuritis had my MRI and was told by ophthalmologist I have ms and would have to chase my gp for an appointment to see a neurologist as this is what he is recommending is this normal procedure I feel completely lost and in shock and still don’t have all my vision back.please any advice.
Hello and Welcome Littleone,
You will have to get a referral from your gp to see a neuro, who will no doubt put you through more tests. Take one step at a time, first step gp, make an appointment asap and tell him what the opthalmologist said. Then comes the wait for the appt’ with neuro, hopefully won’t be to long. Did he give you a copy of your MRI, did he say he would write to your gp as this is the normal practice or did he give you a letter to give to your gp? It’s no wonder you’re in shock as it’s a lot to take in. Talk to those that are close to you, gather all the information you can. If you go to the home page of this forum they supply brochues about ms which could be of help for you. Remember you are not alone we are all here for you, for whatever you want to say.
Take care and let it sink in slowly as you will go through a grieving process, but you will come out of it and realise there is life with ms.
Janety
x
Thanks my partner is very supportive and listens so I’m lucky there he said he would write to gp and that I need to chase my gp after 2 weeks to get the refferal done.
Hello, and welcome
The first thing that you should know is that ophthalmologists are not allowed to diagnose MS - they are not qualified to do so. This may not mean that yours is wrong, but he/she could be.
MS is only diagnosed after someone has had at least two attacks of MS symptoms and if their nervous system has been affected in at least two places. Optic neuritis (ON) is a common first symptom of MS, but about 50% of people who get ON as a first attack never have another attack and so never develop MS.
There are also several causes of ON; MS is only one of them.
Because of the complexity, only a neurologist who is experienced in MS can formally diagnose it.
Re your ON. The average duration is about 6 weeks and it can get worse before it gets better. A lot of people find that things continue to improve for many months after that though, so even if you’ve had it for longer than 6 weeks, you may find that it keeps getting better, albeit painfully slowly!
I don’t know how much you know about MS, but you should know that there is a lot of rubbish portrayed on the telly and in films and some of the stuff on-line is plain crazy. The truth is that, yes, having MS changes our lives and, at times, it really sucks, but it is NOT the end of the world. The vast majority of us live really quite normal lives. And there is no reason why those lives can’t still be good.
Take it one step at a time. You’ll be OK.
Karen x