This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

I don't think I can take much more, and am seriously considering ending my life and have been for months. I'm 24 years old, male, and afraid I might have MS. This last year, My brother died, I discovered my mother was an alchoholic, My fiance left me, I was gained chronic tinnitus from a concert, and started to suffer from panic and anxiety disorder.

Some new symptoms I have:

Every morning I feel painful all over my body, and feel weak in both legs and arms, similar to the flu feeling, enough so that I don't get out of bed for a couple hours after waking.
I've experienced blurry vision once or twice for about half a day in one eye, which I did have checked out with an eye exam and nothing was found.
I am tired all day every day, no matter how much sleep I get.
Random Muscle Fasciculations (twitching) that came out of nowhere last friday, 24/7 ALL over my body and wont leave.

I had an MRI a week ago, and the radiologist found one NON SPECIFIC finding of white matter on my right parietal lobe. They said it looked chronic and more attributed to infection / trauma vs. demyelination which was reassuring, though I know MS can be present without lesions. The MRI was a 3.0 T / no contrast used.

Just about 10 minutes ago, my right leg felt extremely tingly and numb, and my hearing felt weird in my right ear, and I felt a bit of loss of balance. And now I am terrified. I can't take any more suffering, and was already close to ending my life. My appointment with a neurologist is in 2 months, and that is the soonest I can get in.

I want to believe this is just anxiety, but the physical nature of the symptoms and the strength is very concerning and makes me extremely depressed & sad. I do have appointments scheduled, but I would like to know if anyone here can point anything out that says this ISN'T ms. I'm scared, and once again very tired of suffering. I am ready to be done. I don't expect a DX from a forum, but any advice that can be given would be great.

First of all you don't have a dx of MS. You have been under a great deal of stress. That could make anyone feel sick. The symptoms you have could be caused by other things. 18 months ago I had a somewhat similar situation; I felt very weak and had body aches and a cough I could not shake. My doctor didn't know what was wrong with me. I was sent to two specialists, but nothing was found and every day I grew weaker and sicker. All of that caused me to be very depressed and I considered suicide too. Eventually I ended up in the hospital. They ran a multitude of tests and finally discovered that I had mononucleosis. That's strange for a 65 year old geezer. Anyway the solution was to get plenty of bed rest. I did that and after time I began to feel better. Today I'm glad to still be alive. BTW I do have MS, but it's been 19 years since I was dxed and I'm still not too bad.

I think it would be very premature to kill yourself at this time. I would suggest that you continue your efforts to find out what's wrong.

st0rch wrote:I don't think I can take much more, and am seriously considering ending my life and have been for months. I'm 24 years old, male, and afraid I might have MS. This last year, My brother died, I discovered my mother was an alchoholic, My fiance left me, I was gained chronic tinnitus from a concert, and started to suffer from panic and anxiety disorder.

Some new symptoms I have:

Every morning I feel painful all over my body, and feel weak in both legs and arms, similar to the flu feeling, enough so that I don't get out of bed for a couple hours after waking.
I've experienced blurry vision once or twice for about half a day in one eye, which I did have checked out with an eye exam and nothing was found.
I am tired all day every day, no matter how much sleep I get.
Random Muscle Fasciculations (twitching) that came out of nowhere last friday, 24/7 ALL over my body and wont leave.

I had an MRI a week ago, and the radiologist found one NON SPECIFIC finding of white matter on my right parietal lobe. They said it looked chronic and more attributed to infection / trauma vs. demyelination which was reassuring, though I know MS can be present without lesions. The MRI was a 3.0 T / no contrast used.

Just about 10 minutes ago, my right leg felt extremely tingly and numb, and my hearing felt weird in my right ear, and I felt a bit of loss of balance. And now I am terrified. I can't take any more suffering, and was already close to ending my life. My appointment with a neurologist is in 2 months, and that is the soonest I can get in.

I want to believe this is just anxiety, but the physical nature of the symptoms and the strength is very concerning and makes me extremely depressed & sad. I do have appointments scheduled, but I would like to know if anyone here can point anything out that says this ISN'T ms. I'm scared, and once again very tired of suffering. I am ready to be done. I don't expect a DX from a forum, but any advice that can be given would be great.

Welcome to ThisIsMS; we are glad you found us. No one (not even a good doctor) can tell you that you DON'T have MS. MS is a diagnosis of exclusion, made after the other more likely possible causes have been ruled out.

I hope you are open to suggestions as your last sentence implies. Here are mine:

1. Find a GP/family doctor you trust and respect.
2. Discuss your written list of symptoms with him and develop a game plan (testing, specialists, etc.)
3. Please watch the following video (I think you will find all your symptoms mentioned here.):

Diagnosing and Treating Vitamin B12 Deficiency: "Everything You Want Your Doctor to Know about Vitamin B12"

I highly recommend this 50-minute documentary featuring Sally Pacholok, RN, BSN, & her husband Jeffrey Stuart, D.O. (authors of the book, Could It Be B12? An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses); Lawrence Solomon, M.D., hematologist with Yale Medical School; Ralph Green, M.D., hematologist at UC Davis; and Donald Jacobsen, PhD, at the Cleveland Clinic (Homocysteine Research Lab).

If your symptoms stem from a vitamin B12 deficiency (which any person can develop at any age), it is easily and inexpensively treated; if caught early, symptoms are usually reversible. Do not take vitamin B supplements before testing, as this will skew the results.

We wish you all the best; please let us know how it goes.

Hi,
An MS diagnosis sounds a long way off for you. Nonetheless, you need a proper examination. I absolutely loath the idea of blaming how you feel on your state of mind. Its like a chicken and an egg.
Get the following tests done first
Infections-
EBV
Lyme (if its in your area)
Mycoplasmas strains
Chlamydia Strains
Borrellia and babesia strains

General Health
B12 levels
Uric acid levels
Amino acid levels
Others will have an endless array to suggest
General Fitness
Do Pilates, Yoga or join a gym - you don't have to be a jock to do anything of those things.
Diet
Don't eat crap

Blaming anxiety is self fulfilling. Get out of your current arrangement by making a plan and sticking to it. Failing to plan will be planning to fail.

You can sort this out by taking a step outside of your current environment. One step will do if you mean it.

Regards

hi st0rch sorry to hear you are feeling so low

what can you tell us about your typical dietary (food/fluid/meds/supplements) routine and level of activity?
any earlier self-destructive behaviour related to medicating anxiety?
any other kinds of diagnoses over time? issues with infection, allergies, stomach troubles, any other seemingly random thing?
any routine childhood or teenage issues?

all these factors can help us provide slightly more informed suggestions for you to follow up with - which could be reading and action on your own behalf, as well as following up with a good set of specialists. see if you can add a dietitian to your total health team - ive read studies in which surveyed docs report that they are unlikely to refer patients to a preventative practitioner, even when they know that diet and nutrition action is likely to help. worst case scenario, you rule out nutritional involvement in your current situation.

all that said, in the short term i'm interested in what you can share about the questions above.

hope you feel better soon!

You are all making me feel so much better by just responding, thank you for all the wonderful advice and suggestions. Out of curiosity what about the information I gave makes you think it's a low chance of MS being DX'd?

As far as the questions you asked,

I don't take any meds, take vitamins maybe once every two weeks. I don't eat junk food and try to buy organic, though I know I don't eat enough most days. exercise maybe once or twice a week.
When you say self destructive behaviour do you mean abusing medication? At the moment I'm not on any medication for anxiety out of fear. I was on xanax for a while in 2013, but got off after two months when I realized how bad the withdrawals could be.
I have had some stomach problems in the past, no alergies or known infections. I am in Utah, so my GP tells my lyme wouldn't be an issue.
As a teenager I had plenty of stress and a pretty messy childhood, if that was what you were asking.
I did do blood tests, and everything except vitamin D came back normal (I'm not sure if they test for vitamin B12?)

Let me know what you think or if you need any more info to help me. I know no one here can DX me, but with such a long wait until the doctor, I'm really really in a bad place, especially with the onslaught of awful life misfortunes I've had. The muscle twitching, random weakness in my limbs the mornings, and (what I percieve) to be heat sensitivity as I feel the legs get a bit weaker are what are really worrying me. Especially the last episode I just had of my right leg feeling extremely tingly and weird.

Thank you so much, I don't want to die but I'm in such an awful place, and with every other health issue I'm already dealing with I don't know if I'm strong enough as most of you to handle an MS DX.

hey there glad you feel a bit better atm.

we can't dx ms here - that's really for the docs. anyone can have a long list of symptoms that sound like ms, but a doc would have to go through a bunch of tests and tick off all the boxes on a checklist to say with increasing confidence that you possibly, probably, or most likely had ms etc. there is no 100% certainty no matter how many tests you have done that are consistent with ms. if memory serves the closed you can get is 'clinically definite ms'.

i think your situation sounds like a collection of combined nutrient insufficiencies could be involved. it is true that ms patients typically share those nutrient problems, but i don't think having them is an automatic ms dx. to me, if you don't clean up the possible symptomatic static associated with malnutrition, you risk clouding the docs' ability to diagnose, because they often aren't sufficiently trained to pic up nutritional deficits and may end up attributing them to something else.

thanks for the info! sounds like a pretty decent starting point for diet and exercise. what kind of daily fluid intakes are routine?

re destructive behaviour i mean self-medication using either prescription, over the counter or recreational drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, or a combination.

if you can obtain your own copy of your bloodwork, it could be helpful to see what they assessed.

low vit d3 can be its own issue but may also be linked to low cofactors such as magnesium and perhaps also zinc, calcium and so on. curious whether your docs had you start d3 supplements after you got that low result, and if the d3 was balanced with mineral cofactors?

st0rch wrote:Out of curiosity what about the information I gave makes you think it's a low chance of MS being DX'd?

I don't take any meds, take vitamins maybe once every two weeks. I don't eat junk food and try to buy organic, though I know I don't eat enough most days....

.... I am in Utah, so my GP tells my lyme wouldn't be an issue.

It is not a matter of the information you gave us, but rather that you have not told us which conditions have been tested for and ruled out (other than your GP doesn't think that Lyme disease could be an issue because you are in Utah); MS would be the last one on the list of possibilities (sort of the "last man standing").

As for your diet… When you "don't eat enough most days," does that mean you are eating a vegan diet? Do you eat animal-source foods, such as cheese, milk, eggs, poultry, red meat?

By the way, when testing is done: do not take vitamin B supplements before testing, as this will skew test results. Request your own copy of any test results – the actual number results are more useful than "normal" or "fine."

In the time you have before your next doctor's appointment, compose a written list of all your symptoms to take with you and discuss with him. Write down questions you might have for him too.

Even if it is MS, how does that lead to you wanting to end your life?

You need to deal with whatever has been dealt to you man.

I am 26 (male) and was diagnosed a year ago, it is not the end of the world. Unless YOU make it the end of the world. Pus it could be a countless amount of other things.

best wishes,

Chris

"Thoughts of Suicide" is one more symptom of many conditions.

From the following video:

Diagnosing and Treating Vitamin B12 Deficiency: "Everything You Want Your Doctor to Know about Vitamin B12"

In this 50-minute documentary featuring Sally Pacholok, RN, BSN, & her husband Jeffrey Stuart, D.O. (authors of the book, Could It Be B12? An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses); Lawrence Solomon, M.D., hematologist with Yale Medical School; Ralph Green, M.D., hematologist at UC Davis; and Donald Jacobsen, PhD, at the Cleveland Clinic (Homocysteine Research Lab) is the following:

Signs and Symptoms of B12 Deficiency:
Tingling/Numbness
Sore Mouth or Tongue
Fatigue
Anxiety
Irritability
Depression
Weakness
Abnormal Gait
Mental Impairment
Visual Disturbances
Migraine
Orthostatic Intolerance
Chest Pain
Tachycardia
Difficulty Breathing
Edema
Elevated Homocysteine
Elevated MMA
Stomach and G.I. Problems
Blood Abnormalities
Neurological Lesions
Limb Movement Disorders
Psychosis
Thoughts of Suicide

heya still curious whether your docs prescribed d3, and if so whether they also recommended mineral balancing?

more info relevant to what you've described above:

Suicidal patients are deficient in vitamin D, associated with a pro-inflammatory status in the blood.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25240206
We propose that routine clinical testing of vitamin D levels could be beneficial in patients with suicidal symptoms, with subsequent supplementation in patients found to be deficient.

(study appears to be flawed since it doesn't seem to acknowledge the importance of addressing mineral cofactor status when supplementing vit d3..)

also:

Low Serum Cholesterol Concentration and Risk of Suicide
http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract ... _of.7.aspx
Adjusting for age and sex, we found that those in the lowest quartile of serum total cholesterol concentration (<4.27 mmol/liter) had more than six times the risk of committing suicide ... as did subjects in the highest quartile (>5.77 mmol/liter).

(your body makes vit d3 from 7-dehydrocholesterol (7-DHC), a type of cholesterol found in skin)

other science of possible interest:

Family Food Insufficiency, but Not Low Family Income, Is Positively Associated with Dysthymia and Suicide Symptoms in Adolescents1
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/132/4/719.short
Food-insufficient adolescents were significantly more likely to have had dysthymia, thoughts of death, a desire to die and have attempted suicide. There is a strong association between food insufficiency and depressive disorder and suicidal symptoms in U.S. adolescents.

Nutritional therapies for mental disorders
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pd ... 91-7-2.pdf
Notably, essential vitamins, minerals, and omega-3 fatty acids are often deficient in the general population in America and other developed countries; and are exceptionally deficient in patients suffering from mental disorders. Studies have shown that daily supplements of vital nutrients often effectively reduce patients' symptoms. Supplements that contain amino acids also reduce symptoms, because they are converted to neurotransmitters that alleviate depression and other mental disorders.

best to think big picture i'd say