A couple weeks ago while I was putting my daughter down for a nap I felt a weird pressure in my left chest and tension in the upper left part of my back and neck; I described it as a warm micro-stretching feeling. I started to feel light-headed. Googled heart attack symptoms and let my husband know that I was not feeling right. Got a fizzy feeling along the left side of my face, and in my left toes. Felt some pressure around the back of my left eye, and more chest tightness and tension in my left upper back. I ended up calling 911 and going to the emergency room in an ambulance, concerned that I could be having a heart attack, I wouldn't really think that I would be at high risk of having a heart attack, and I was embarrassed to be the center of such a scene, but it definitely seemed like a better safe than sorry kind of thing. I was having some trouble thinking; people asked me simple questions and I had to have them repeat because I wasn't following along right. Someone asked me something about the last 12 hours and I couldn't figure out when 12 hours ago was. It was weird.
I had a heart function test, some blood work, chest x-ray, CT scan with and without dye. Everything was normal. My heart was fine. No stroke.
After the initial chest pain I didn't have any more chest pain, but my left side stayed tingling for the 6 hours that I was there.
The doctor said originally she was trying to connect the heart stuff with the tingling, but my heart was fine so she concluded that they were two separate things. She referred me for an MRI. She said what they would look for would be demyelination, which she didn't expect there to be, but if there was I would need to work with a neurologist. They were going to refer me to a neurologist.
So, I was done, and still tingling. A couple days later I was scheduled for an MRI, for almost a week later.
Throughout the week sometimes the tingling went away, but it stayed for most of the time.
I didn't know anything about demyelination so I googled it, and googled having the left side of your body tingle, and MS kept coming up. I have an aunt with MS, but that is it, so I didn't really know much about it. When I saw lists of symptoms for MS I became more concerned. I don't have any of the vision issues, but I have a bunch of the other ones. It is all stuff that I just attributed to other things.
- Fatigue: Definitely. I have had problems with this for at least a few years. I especially notice it when I am places where it is awkward to yawn, I notice that I yawn a ton. It is embarrassing to me. I also especially notice when I am driving that sometimes I REALLY struggle to pay attention to the road. To the point that there have been times in the past where I wonder if it is safe for me to drive, or I choose not to. In the past I attributed this to either not getting enough sleep (because of my daughter) or my untreated ADHD (I just restarted with meds a couple months ago). Now that I am back to taking Adderall, I blame the fatigue on my Adderall wearing off...because I do tend to be more tired then. But what it is, is it is usually in the afternoon. I feel so sluggish, I really struggle to get anything done, whether or not I'm taking Adderall. This week it has been kind of weird because on the one hand I am taking the Adderall, so I feel ready to go get stuff done...except that then I stand up to go do something and I am so exhausted that I end up sitting down again. Just things like walking across the room make me much more tired than it seems like they should. It is summer here, so I think part of it is the heat. When it is hot I always feel exhausted. WHICH, I later found is also an MS thing, to be sensitive to heat.
- Tingling: Yes. Also, once I separated the chest tension from the tingling, I realized, actually, I have had tingling before. I went to an emergency room a couple years ago because my toes? I think? On my left foot? were tingling or numb. First I went to an urgent care facility, and they told me to go right to the emergency room. If I remember right, I think the emergency room people said there was nothing to really do about it because we could either order a bunch of expensive tests or wait and see. So, with no history of symptoms we decided to wait and see. I forgot all about that. We are in a different country now, but we will be visiting the US in a couple weeks and I am planning to get records about that visit. Remembering about this made me feel more concerned.
- Bladder/bowel: I often have times where I feel like I need to pee every 15 minutes or something. I worried that this could be a sign of diabetes. It isnt a UTI. But my blood test from the ER showed my blood sugar as totally normal. Also, since my daughter was born (she just turned 3) I have had some problems with very minor incontinence like, when I sneeze or laugh, etc. I blamed that on her, and I tried a kegels regimen but it didn't seem to make any difference. Lots of constipation.
- Sexual problems: Dryness, and harder to climax than before (and never with my husband). I blamed this on my husband being circumcised, though, and on insufficient foreplay, and on my religious background that left me with more guilt about sex than necessary.
- Emotional changes: I have had a lot of problems with depression over the last couple years. At first I blamed this on my Mirena IUD but when I had that removed the depression did not go away. So then I thought it was because our lifestyle has been kind of stressful. Or because I was not taking medication for my ADHD. I also have always gotten kind of bad PMS.
- Foggy brain: Yes. Sometimes.
- Tremors: I don't usually have a problem with this, but about 3 or 4 days before the first ER visit I noticed that my hand was shaking randomly. I have a brother whose hands always shake, always have, so I just thought it was weird but didn't think anything of it. It went away after 20 minutes or something.
SO, when I saw that all of those things could be connected I became more concerned and started reading more about MS.
As the tingling kept happening I figured there wasn't really much to do about it because we were just waiting for the MRI, so I did nothing.
Did the MRI. Got the CD for it.
Annnd they wouldn't tell me what the result was. They said the report would be ready in about 10 business days. The tingling was even worse by then; in addition to my left side, my right foot started tingling. I felt concerned about the spread of the tingling and my lack of ability to follow up with a neurologist. I called a nurse line and even though I explained the situation, since I was having "stroke like symptoms...especially tingling on one side of the body" and because my mind felt foggy she said the result came up that I should call 911. I said I was confident that it was not a stroke, but she still urged me to go to the emergency room.
So, I went to another emergency room, where they still wouldn't have anyone look at my MRI, and I just sat there tingling intensely and with a very foggy head, waiting for hours. The end result was ok, though. I was referred to a neurologist and that neurologist was going to look at my MRI the next day and I was supposed to be able to see him in 1-2 weeks, or sooner if he saw some concerns on the MRI.
I figured out how to look at the MRI images. They didn't look like the ones online for MS, but obviously I'm not a neurologist or radiologist, so that reduced my concern a bit but I know I don't know.
Kept tingling.
I also remembered another interesting, possibly relevant symptom: a few months ago for about a month I couldn't turn my head to either side without a lot of pain. I noticed it most when I was driving and wanted to look over my shoulders to change lanes. It was intense. I don't know if that is related or not, but it could be.
So, the neurologist called and scheduled an appointment--in over a month! Today I was able to pick up my MRI report from the hospital. MRI is clean.
SO...I'm still tingling. It is spreading. Yesterday and today it has been my whole body sometimes. Mostly the left side, though, and my right foot.
As a result of the negative MRI, my husband feels like things are all great and resolved and I almost certainly don't have MS. I hope I don't have it, but I just feel like especially with the tingling I keep not finding other things it can match up with. I clicked through whole lists of possible things that could have that symptom and most of them were just individual limbs tingling, or things like headaches (which I rarely get); nothing that includes one side from head to toe. I really was expecting to find something on the right side of my brain. I feel like the MRI might be wrong, because it was without dye, and the slices were 4mm, and not the usual slices that are part of a MS MRI, and they didn't do my spine at all. I think it was a 1.5T machine. Does it make sense to be concerned about these details, or is it pretty uncommon to have early MS that would not show on a normal head MRI?
I am worried about my health and I feel uncomfortable doing nothing and just waiting while I might be having slow brain damage occurring as I wait for my appointment with the neurologist.
Is there something else I should be considering? Is there something else that can cause just the left half of the body to tingle?
Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
