So 8 weeks ago I was feeling particularly rough. I’d had a nasty cold which started to get better but then decided to get much worse. After around two weeks I noticed I had a bit of an achy/numb lower back and bottom – a bit like I’d been to watch a really long film in the cinema (say The Hobbit). The next day I noticed it had kind of spread to the top of my legs and I had achy feet and legs. The next day the achy feet and legs had turned into pins and needles. The day after that I had a band of numbness all around my body from my lower back to a third of the way down the top of my legs and from my feet up to my lower legs I had the worst pins & needles ever. Initially I had thought I’d trapped a nerve as I had a really bad cough which I was having to take Night Nurse to sleep through but by the fourth day I was getting scared that it was something else.
I rang NHS Direct who were lovely but didn’t really put my mind at ease. Rather than putting me on a call back they gave me the number of my local on call doctor and told me to ring them immediately. They asked me a lot of the same questions as NHS Direct many of which seemed to be checking I hadn’t got Meningitis as they kept asking me about rashes & bright lights. They then advised me that I should go straight to my nearest A&E to see the out of hours doctor there.
We got to A&E who were expecting me and went straight through to the doctor. She got me to lay down and moved my legs around a bit, she asked me some questions and then looked confused. I mentioned about the things that happened in part 2, she still looked confused. She prescribed me some antibiotics for my cough, said that she thought I’d probably damaged some peripheral nerves coughing and that she was happy for me to go home “providing you see your doctor ASAP, you should have an urgent MRI just to check whether its MS”.
The moment she said that, it was in my head – I’ve got MS. We left the doctor & I burst into tears “I don’t want to have MS” I told my husband. He reassured me that it probably wasn’t and after I had calmed down I pointed out even if it was “President Bartlett ran a country for 8 years with MS” (I’m a massive West Wing fan!).
Two days later once my report from A&E had gone through to my surgery I met Doctor W for the first time. I was still a panic ridden mess as the sensations in my legs hadn’t improved. I told him the conclusions of the doctor in A&E, he immediately said that it definitly wasn’t a trapped nerve. He didn’t say anything either way about MS but said he would request an urgent MRI for me. He suggested that I may have Guillain–Barré syndrome and sent me for blood tests.
I felt slightly better, he’d given me the name of something I may have – I looked it up online & my symptoms matched up. He told me it would probably last for a few weeks. But it was there in my head now and he hadn’t ruled it out so I looked up MS too. My symptoms matched up and not just these symptoms but all my other weird episodes too. So now it was a waiting game…
TrevisMS 