I have been addicted to reading everyones posts for years, self diagnosing and terrifying myself every night thinking the worst. I'm a 25 year old female and my symptoms began about 3 years ago. I was a runner, running 5 miles every other day, then one day my leg was killing me and since then I haven't been able to run. I had an x ray done and they didn't find anything so I dismissed it as shin splints. But why would I still have a dull achy pain in my left leg, 3 years later? Shortly after my leg situation, I began to feel pain in all of my muscles and noticed that my hands were kind of numb. I could still do things with them but it was just this feeling like something wasn't right. Ever since I could remember, I would have weak hands upon waking... where I'd have to wait almost an hour before I could even make a fist. But this felt different, and because my whole body felt weak and kind of painful, I started to get terrified. I realized sometimes when putting my hands into my pocketbook to look for something, my hand would kind of stop working and spaz out. So I'd use the other hand. I had a general blood test done and they said I was fine, but some count was a little high, which only indicated that my body was probably fighting off some minor infection or something, so they dismissed me as a hypochonriac.
I am terrified that I have multiple sclerosis. 3 years later and my symptoms have not subsided. In fact, they've gotten worse. I now have muscle twitches all over my body every single day, and muscle jerks, I get patches of numbness, my lip or an area on my chin will go numb for a split second, where I touch it and it goes away. I have a weird rash on my upper left stomach that is a pinkish brown in color and itches sometimes, which i developed right when i got these symptoms and it never went away... it's kind of embarrasing. I don't even know if that is related. Sometimes the numbness in my hands is worse than other times, but for the most part it's always there and more severely my left hand. It's the fingers and the forearm. They just feel heavy and some mornings every once in a while I'll wake up with a terrible episode where brushing my teeth is a challenge. I don't have a lack of energy, in fact I feel jittery and hyper half the time. My most recent symptom is this shaky feeling, that I noticed 3 years ago - where i'd be sitting at the computer and realize that i was ever so slightly rocking back and forth.... now it's become more obvious and i've started to have a slight tremor, no one else notices it but i do.... i also notice that when i close my right eye then my left, the colors in my left eye are slightly faded in comparison to my right eye... sometimes i notice it and other times i don't. it's the same eye my floater is in and it's my left side, which is where the majority of my symptoms are... so i'm scared about that too. is it possible this ISN'T MS?
i don't know why i choose to live this way, i feel like it's better to sometimes think it's MS and sometimes not think it's MS instead of finding out for sure and KNOWING it's DEFINITELY MS. I know early treatment is best, but I'm so afraid of knowing i have something they can't cure... i'm afraid i'll sink into a depression that i wont come out of. I have driven myself crazy for 3 years instead of doing the right thing and seeking a neurologist. Does anyone feel the same way or think these symptoms could possibly be attributed to anything else???? I would really appreciate a response.