Hi everyone. Im waiting to find out if i have ms. Ive got the see the consultant as the neurologist doesnt really know what is wrong with me.
I started with symptoms in july and havent been able to go back to work, i have just left for good. I have quite a lot of the ms symptoms including flashing in my eyes, slurred speech,difficulty swallowing i.e.choking on food sometimes. along with pain, tiredness, diffculty doing anything for a long period of time and generally just feeling rubbish most of the time, especially if i go anywhere. I have also had
I have weak muscles which i am having physio for and also have a muscle tremor when i do my physio exercises. they were the ones that got the ball rolling so to speak and got my doctor to refer me to a neurologist. My mum has ms and has been trying to get the doctors to refer me to a neurologist for years. a few years ago they told me i had fibromyalgia.
I went to see the neurologist after my mri scan which he couldnt find any lesions. he did all the neurological tests on me and i didnt perform well in most of them especially the balance and coordination type tests. he did agree that there was something going on, so i have to see the consultant to find out more. have been waiting a while so its really getting to me as i just want to find out if there is something wrong and to deal with it. My mum has said she knows a few people who have no lesions on first mri but they turn out eventually to have ms. I havent heard about this before. i presumed if your mri was fine then that was it. but now im a bit confused. Any help would be appreicated… i know everyone has there own story about the long process of a diagonosis of ms.
Just proves the point really; mum’s are always right. It’s only small percentages who do not show lesions and it’s probably for two reasons.
The NHS use MRI machines that have a resolution of 1.5 Tesla’s at nearly all hospitals. You need at least 3 T to get a good resolution/picture.
Coupled with this are the resolution slices they take. Just like a CT scan they take pictures in slices of the part of the body they want an image of. The Neurologist can ask for slices every 3/5 or whatever distance between. A large lesion is possible 5mm so it is theoretical but unlikely that a lesion may be in the gap so to speak so therefore no image of it.
The spine especially is just a thin; bony; flexible tube about as thick as your thumb; it carries millions of nerves so again places to hide. The brain is in respect a wide open space (well mine is anyway).
Well, it certainly sounds like something is going on, but I hope you will try and keep an open mind - there are literally hundreds of conditions that have the same sort of symptoms as MS, including things like migraine and vitamin deficiencies. Who knows - it might end up being something quite easy to fix that’s causing yours (fingers crossed!)?
Leaving the technical stuff aside, it’s certainly true that a small percentage of people with MS don’t have lesions that are visible on MRI. So while a negative MRI means that MS is very unlikely, it cannot rule it out completely. That’s why it’s so important to see someone who really knows his/her stuff - who will be able to piece together all the info and come up with the right answer.