This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

Hello all,

My name is Hope and I am a 33 year old female. Last Sunday I experienced, what felt like to me, electrical shooting pain (which took my breath away, due to the intensity of it) which shot up my whole left side of my body and it lasted for 3 to 4 seconds. This pain again struck me two more times on Monday night, once while standing and once while lying down in my bad. Then on Tuesday I had about 6 to 8 of these “attacks”.

I thought that it might be a pinched nerve and went to a chiropractor and was adjusted. Be as soon as I stood back up I was hit with another “attack” and then went on to have several more. I later on was able to see a neurologist and he diagnosed me with a “nerve disorder” and has referred me to have a MRI. My MRI is not till December the 8th and so I will have lots of time to research and worry myself.

I am still having tingling which travels down my left arm and left leg. My left arm now feels weak/tired the pain is gone and now it just feels like a spasm. I have talked to my Aunt and from the little research that I done I have realized that I might have been having symptoms of MS for quite awhile. Below is a list of what I have been experiencing;

Last 4-6 Months
• Shooting pain/tingling in my left arm and down to my feet
• Shooting pain/tingling in my left arm
• Shooting pain/tingling in my left leg
• Fatigue walking up stairs
• Sudden overwhelming feeling of fatigue
• Feeling very cold, when others are fine
• Difficulty walking down stairs normally
• Increased sensitivity to hot bath/shower
• Decreased sensitivity to pain in my hands at times
• Legs tingling when lying down at night
• Left arm feeling weak/tired, for no apparent reason
• Legs feeling weak/tired , for no apparent reason
• Left hand dropping things more often
• Increased loss in over all coordination
• Eye sight starting to blur from outside towards middle
• Feeling of pressure on knees and wrists
• Feeling vibrations on left side of my torso, for no apparent reason

Last 2 years
• The feeling of vertigo
• Hand/s suddenly feeling tingly and numb
• Getting sick more often than normal
• Increase in number of headaches
• Increased number of migraine like headaches

For as long as I can remember
• Regular body temperature of 97.1
• Both hands slightly tremor
• Upper, mid and lower back pains and tension
• Neck pains and tension
• Lowered sense of feet, tending to run into things with toes

Please, let me know what your opinion is? Thanks and God bless.

~ Hope

hhartwigsen wrote:Hello all,

My name is Hope and I am a 33 year old female. Last Sunday I experienced, what felt like to me, electrical shooting pain (which took my breath away, due to the intensity of it) which shot up my whole left side of my body and it lasted for 3 to 4 seconds. This pain again struck me two more times on Monday night, once while standing and once while lying down in my bad. Then on Tuesday I had about 6 to 8 of these “attacks”.

I thought that it might be a pinched nerve and went to a chiropractor and was adjusted. Be as soon as I stood back up I was hit with another “attack” and then went on to have several more. I later on was able to see a neurologist and he diagnosed me with a “nerve disorder” and has referred me to have a MRI. My MRI is not till December the 8th and so I will have lots of time to research and worry myself.

I am still having tingling which travels down my left arm and left leg. My left arm now feels weak/tired the pain is gone and now it just feels like a spasm. I have talked to my Aunt and from the little research that I done I have realized that I might have been having symptoms of MS for quite awhile. Below is a list of what I have been experiencing;

********
Please, let me know what your opinion is? Thanks and God bless.

~ Hope

Hello Hope, and welcome! My first comment is that, although many of the symptoms on your list seem "neurological" in nature, pretty much all neurological medical conditions share the same symptoms. And there are dozens of those conditions.

The difficulty in diagnosing MS is that there's not a single symptom that is exclusive to MS, so it may take some major investigation on the part of your doctors. And, I might add that many of the items on your list don't seem neurological at all; they may be coincidental or lead to completely separate problems. It's good to make a list of general symptoms for your docs, but don't stress yourself too much about the details. The doctor should be able to notice some signs for himself.

MRIs of both brain and spine would be an important part of an MS diagnosis, and, fortunately, you have a neurologist who has already ordered those and seems right on top of things. Even an MRI won't be 100% definite without some other positive tests.

However... I would like to ask if the "electrical shooting pain" or spasms you list happen as you bend your neck down to your chest. One of the few "classic" clues to a "possible" MS diagnosis is Lhermitte's Sign, which causes that sort of jolt. With apologies for using an often less than reliable source of information -- Wikipedia -- here's a concise description of it, along with a list of other causes for it besides MS.

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lhermitte's_sign

Lhermitte's sign

Lhermitte's sign or the Lhermitte sign (/lɛrˈmiːt/), sometimes called the barber chair phenomenon, is an electrical sensation that runs down the back and into the limbs. In many patients, it is elicited by bending the head forward.[1]

Associated conditions

The sign suggests a lesion of the dorsal columns of the cervical cord or of the caudal medulla. Although often considered a classic finding in multiple sclerosis, it can be caused by a number of conditions, including transverse myelitis, Behçet's disease,[2] trauma, radiation myelopathy,[3] vitamin B12 deficiency (subacute combined degeneration), and compression of the spinal cord in the neck from any cause such as cervical spondylosis, disc herniation, tumor, and Arnold-Chiari malformation.

Although it would seem to indicate a lesion in the spinal cord, I had Lhermitte's spasms that lasted for weeks & weeks about 30 years ago and none of my MRIs have ever shown signs of spinal lesions. My spine just shows the usual degenerative changes due to wear & tear from age. I just now bent my head down to the right and yes, I still get a very slight twinge of Lhermitte's down my left arm/leg, although I rarely notice it now -- before, the jolts were enough to knock my leg out from under me while I was walking!! I never went to the doctor, since I assumed it was due to the whiplash incident in my childhood.

I was personally diagnosed with MS 11 yrs ago without offering any symptom complaints except a slight finger tremor, since the basic exam the doctor gave me showed him enough clues to warrant MRIs, and that led to an immediate diagnosis. And pretty much all of MY other numb/tingly stuff is due to a hereditary peripheral neuropathy (HNPP) that was diagnosed for me at the same time, and NOT to MS.

Good luck to you, and I hope your diagnostic journey also leads to some relief! Please keep us posted.

euphoniaa,

Thank you for your response and for all the information. I will defiantly be asking my doctor some more questions. And I will update once I find out some answers.

~ Hope