I have finally signed up on this site, have been lurking since the old forum while I was waiting for my hospital appointments to come.
I have just recovered from two weeks of bed rest after my X-Ray assisted Lumber Puncture and about 2 months ago I had an MRI Scan. Now I’m just waiting for the Neurologist to get round to interpriting the results and telling me.
Although I am as yet undiagnosed I have been suffering since I first noticed tingly toes way back in 2004, for the first few years all I suffered with is tingling sensations in my skin, it spread from my feet up through my body stopping around my neck.
After a while I started getting random vision problems that would come and go. I had trouble with my waterworks and ahem the other thing and all of this was slow but steady changes. I went to the doctor once during this time (I know, I’m such a man…bury my head in the sand and all that) to see if he could test me for diabetes since my brother has that and the results came back negative. He did tell me my white blood cell count was high but that I was possibly fighting off an illness or bug.
Anyway after that I just left it again since I had no clue why I was feeling so strange although I felt something was not right I was still able bodied and so I wondered if it was somehow related to me just getting “old” and never watching my diet or caring about healthy living.
Then in June of this year I had a cold and during that time I woke up one night for my regular bathroom visit to discover my right leg wouldn’t bend I could only straighten it. My vision was more fuzzy than it used to be, my balance was completley shot although I didn’t feel dizzy and the following day I discovered I had difficulty pronouncing some words when talking. My right hand was tingling more than usual and fine movements such as typing and picking things up were extremely difficult. I presume…that was my first relaspe.
After telling my parents my mother suggested it could be MS, one of my distant relatives had just been diagnosed with it and so I did some googling and found this site. Realised I have about 12 of the thirteen symptom categories and pretty freaked out by what had happened I went to see the doctor…fastforward to now and thats about my story.
I’ve been unemployed since 2004, I left my last job over an unrelated incident and was unsuccessfull returning to work for a couple of years after that as the ammount of time I could spend on my feet was getting shorter and my ability to drive was becomming more difficult (I don’t drive anymore).
Eventually I just gave up trying to find work as nothing seemed viable with how I was feeling. For the first four years I lived off my savings and that turns out, was a terrible idea, since by the time I needed to claim benefits I was no longer eligable for anything at all. Which left my partner in the awful position of supporting us both.
So not only will these tests finally give me an official condition but I will also finally be eligable to claim something and help my partner pay some bills.
Oh I’m David by the way, I’m 33 and live in Plymouth.