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So I was in the hospital last night for an 'odd' episode. I'm female in early 30s. Good health.

I was standing in a shop, standing squarely, facing forward. Feet firmly planted. I had not just gotten up or anything. I had been looking at an object for a few minutes.

Suddenly (and it all happened in about 15-30 seconds) my left leg started side stepping repeatedly, making my stance wider and wider. In those few seconds my brain literally thought "why is my left leg stepping out to the side without me telling it to?". Then I realized what was happening. I was sinking down into my left side. I think my leg possibly was trying to support me but it was like it was weak and I slumped over the side and was weak for a moment. Like that side couldn't hold me up. I never fully collapsed but was able to catch myself but it was hard. I didn't feel like I was going to pass out. It was completely different. There was no darkness closing in around me. I've had that feeling once as a child. It was not this. It was like I didn't have command over my body for a moment and it was weak.

Afterwards I was very tired and light headed. I walked back to my car. Drove home (3 minutes away) and when I was about to get out, I reached for the handle of my car and missed it. I went inside. Sat down. When I got up my legs felt heavier a little for the next 20 minutes or so.

Later I decided to go into the hospital and get checked. When he gave me normal routine exam, touch his fingers my nose etc I passed perfectly. They ruled out a stroke and the doctor was very adamant that it could be MS and said I would need to get a follow up.

My question: does this sound like something people get with MS? Can it come on so suddenly and go away so suddenly?

Thanks so much

Nevi

hey there welcome to the site

i don't think you will find anyone who would suggest that what you describe could be definitively or even sort of like one particular dx. good that they ruled out stroke.
ms dx is a process of exclusion. docs will have close to 80 different possibilities to rule out before arriving at an ms dx. there can be common ground between categories of ms patients but the stats only get you so far. once you can be assigned to one type of another, after that things get much more individual.
transient weakness could be any number of things. when my legs used to give out on me, i was vit b12 deficient. for years i could reverse such issues with a b12 supplement. i let it drag on too long, and eventually i did permanent irreversible damage. b12 is a major differential dx for ms. if you get checked out by a doc who's ruling things out, b12 will probably be on that list. docs are starting to pay attention to vit d3 status in ms as well. there's way more to ms nutrition than that in the literature, but so far just those two have started to make it into mainstream practice. if you have any reason to suspect that your nutrient status could be down, due to low food intake, high activity levels, chronic physical or emotional or mental stress (including injury), dietary preferences, medications (including birth control), one or more pregnancies (including closely spaced pregnancies) etc etc etc, these are all things to consider. that's my 2c

Hi,

I agree with JL, but I can't see why you are sure a stroke is definitely ruled out. Did they do scans?

Have they left it to you to follow up or are they doing something?

Regards,

Thank you so much for both of your replies. I will look into nutrition deficiencies for sure.

I am not sure how they could definitively rule out a mini stroke either and I'm wondering if I should have had an MRI on the spot there.

They gave me a blood test, EKG. The doctor said "strokes cause dizziness. Not lightheadedness". But I'm wondering if because of my young age if they ruled it out without proper testing. Should I go back and ask for an MRI?

Also do MS symptoms usually last the whole day? Can they come on so briefly? Or is this not typical MS?

Thanks so much for your insight guys.

nevi wrote:Also do MS symptoms usually last the whole day? Can they come on so briefly? Or is this not typical MS?

Yes, MS symptoms can come on fairly quickly. Usually, there's subclinical disease activity going on that we don't notice because the brain can compensate. However, once the brain can no longer work around the affected areas we begin to notice deficits. This compensation is called neural plasticity. Damage to the spinal cord is more noticeable since the spinal cord has a much lower capacity for plasticity.

Symptoms from an MS attack usually stick around for a few weeks. For example, my initial attack before I was diagnosed left me with numbness in my arm that went down from my shoulder into my thumb and forefinger. The numbness stuck around for about a month. My second attack was 8 years later. After dealing with neuropathic pain in my leg for about a month, I developed optic neuritis. The vision in my left eye faded out over a period of several hours. I had a round of IV steroids which helped to clear it up over a few days, but it took 6-8 months for my vision to fully stabilize and no longer be sensitive to heat.

Oh, and Jimmylegs is correct about B12 deficiency. It can produce neurological symptoms that can mimic MS in many ways making it difficult for even doctors to tell the difference. It's best to get tested. A full B12 panel includes B12, homocysteine, red blood cell folate and methylmalonic acid. Lastly, don't accept being told that your levels are "normal." Always ask for the test results. B12 should be around 600-800 pg/mL and homocysteine should be around 4-10 µmol/L.

You may wish to read the following topic for more information about B12.
http://www.thisisms.com/forum/natural-a ... 24857.html

It would also be good to know what supplements, if any, that you're currently taking. Some supplements, such as high dose vitamin B6, can cause neurological symptoms. Supplements with high dose B6 are abundant on store shelves and at online retailers. The RDA is just 2 mg though tablets with 50 mg or more are common. High dose B6 can interfere with proprioception which is our body's awareness of itself with respect to movement and position.

Hi,

To answer your question, yes, get an MRI. Sounds like too much guessing for my liking. You may be very lucky and have had a transitory event but someone should look more deeply into this.

Regards,

Thank you so much for your replies. Good food for thought.

Lastly, if I am understanding you guys correctly, is it correct to say, most MS symptoms come on and stay on for a week(s) at a time? In other words, it is rare for them to happen and leave that day? Or does this happen to individuals? Just trying to understand MS a little better.

Thanks so much for your time

hi again

i personally think what should be made clear is that we just can not make valid generalizations about people's symptomatic experiences of ms. diagnostics have more to do with objective test results than how people feel subjectively day to day.

for those dealing with a relapsing remitting form, yes symptoms can be transient. the duration and form that a relapse may take will be different from person to person. can that duration be less than a day? i would say 'maybe' - especially very early on. in my case, yes. because my route to diagnosis began with an entirely reversible b12 deficiency. b12 kicks in rapidly IF you're early enough on in the process. if a person was not aware that this was their problem, the early symptoms could come and go depending on what was eaten in the course of a day. it would seem random, with a potentially very short turnaround time.

one important thing to recognize is that with many chronic illnesses, it will probably take quite some time with things going slowly off the rails, before a person's condition is serious enough to be labeled a particular condition. again imo, this is why some ppl experience such a long slow and frustrating dx process.

i think the problem may often be the emphasis on naming the problem, putting a label on an unknown entity, 'solving' the mystery, vs aiming for health. i wonder what it would be like if more docs referred to dietitians and wellness professionals, instead of bouncing ppl around from disease specialist to disease specialist, whose failure to identify the problem in their terms, results in the suggestion that the problems stem from patients' stress or similar (which on its own is something that can and should be managed when and if focusing on health - stress can lead individuals to excrete essential nutrients at higher rates - some of these are also known to be low in ms patients and those dealing with other chronic diseases typical of developed countries).

So I saw my neurologist. He said not a mini-stroke because if it were, I would have collapsed all the way down to the floor. My leg would not have supported me in that parallel to the floor position. This week I get an MRI of brain and spine.

He said we may never know what it was. Sure. Could have been a virus i know. Does any other neurological disease do this though? Cause a very brief hiccup in neuro function? Just curious if anyone has any knowledge of stuff like this out there. It was so odd and really shook me up on the day.

Thanks!

by 'not a mini stroke' does that mean not a TIA?

this fellow's issues stemmed from side effects of meds, looks like:

Limb-shaking transient ischemic attacks: case report and review of literature
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1373644/
abstract excerpt: Limb shaking Transient Ischemic Attack is a rare manifestation of carotid-occlusive disease. ... Elderly gentleman presented with symptoms of rhythmic jerky movements of the left arm and both the lower limbs. ... EEG and MRI-Brain revealed normal findings but the MRA revealed complete occlusion of right internal carotid artery. ... [after] diagnosis of low flow TIA was made the patient was treated conservatively with adjustment of his anti-hypertensive and anti-platelet medications.

this one cropped up when i searched transient ischemic attack young female

Internal carotid artery occlusion in a young female with mitral valve prolapse.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2418937/
A healthy 28 year old housewife presented with sudden right hemiplegia and aphasia. No predisposing factors could be ascertained apart from posterior cusp mitral value prolapse on two dimensional echocardiography. Extensive investigations confirmed the presence of cerebral infarction and persistent occlusion of the left internal carotid artery near its origin.

case studies don't really get you very far... if a possible TIA, complex subject...

Transient ischaemic attacks: mimics and chameleons
full text https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fc60/b ... 95da71.pdf
abstract excerpt: Of 1532 consecutive patients attending our TIA service, 1148 (75%) had either definite or possible TIA, 46 (3%) had minor stroke and the remaining 338 (22%) had one of 25 alternative diagnoses (figure 1).
Frequent causes of transient neurological symptoms
that can mimic TIA include:
▸ Migraine aura
▸ Seizure
▸ Syncope
▸ Functional or anxiety related
Table 1 shows some useful clinical distinguishing
features for these common mimics

so that's a snippet of what dr. google scholar has to say about it.

i am anything but a diagnostician. all i can personally help with usually, is helping members figure out whether there's anything that could be done re basic essential nutrient needs - and at that i'm only half decent with a handful of micronutrients. when there's a diagnosis in place, you can usually find a subset of 'usual suspect' nutrients associated with that dx, to work with. when there's no particular dx, all you can really do is sort out how far a person might be off base on their daily essential nutrient requirements.