Date: May/June 2008
Age: 18
I get up one Saturday morning and I have pins and needles in
my hand. Not to worry, they usually disappear after a few minutes anyway, so I
ignore it and carry on with my day. Only the pins and needles don’t wear off.
All day. By the end of the day the pins and needles seem to have spread to half
way up my forearm. The next day, they’re as far as my elbow. I book an
emergency doctor’s appointment on Monday morning, at which the doctor tells me
that it’s probably something very simple like carpal tunnel syndrome, and not
to worry. She tells me to come back if the symptoms don’t improve, or if they
worsen.
I wake up on Wednesday morning and I have pins and needles
in my foot. Not to worry, I think. You’re only concerned because of your hand,
but that’s probably just carpal tunnel. The pins and needles will go after a
while… By lunchtime I notice that, rather than going away, the pins and needles
have made it as far as my thigh. I call the doctor. She tells me to go to
A&E right away, because the carpal tunnel prognosis doesn’t fit. So off I
go to sit in A&E for a few hours…
I finally see the triage doctor in A&E, who tells me not
to worry, it’s probably just carpal tunnel syndrome, like the doctor said- ‘in
my foot?!’ I retort. Shamefaced, he hurriedly explains that he’s referring me
to a neurologist, and hastily scribbles out a referral note for me to take to
my doctor in the morning. The next day I book an appointment with the neurology
department for the following Wednesday.
By Friday I am in agony. It’s so difficult to explain to
people what it’s like for something to be numb, but hurt at the same time.
Nobody quite gets it. I leave work early on Friday afternoon, because I am
struggling to even type anything, it hurts so much. My friend takes me back to
A&E, where I’m quite quickly taken through for further tests. One doctor
keeps running around the emergency room saying ‘ECG?’ to all and sundry – even
to my friend, who doesn’t have anything wrong with her! Later, they lose my ECG
results, so I end up with this doctor coming back several times to say ‘ECG?’
again…
I have a CT scan, before which, the porter (trying to allay
my fears) tells me that it’s ‘better than one of those MRI things, you have to
have these massive injections for them’. The on-call neurologist says that
there’s ‘evidence of demyelination’, which strikes me to the bone.
Demyelination. I know that word. Mum’s MS. Demyelination. MS. Demyelination.
Mum. MS. He leaves me with my friend, for that information to sink in. Before
he comes back, another patient is put in the cubicle next to mine. She wails
and wails, in between deep inhalations of gas and air. She is almost
hysterical. One of the nurses tells her to shut up and calm down, or the gas
and air will be taken away, which shuts her up for a short time. By the time
the neurologist comes back, the wailing is so loud that we can’t hear ourselves
think, never mind what either of us is trying to say. By this time it’s almost
8pm. I’ve been in A&E for nearly 8 hours. I’ve had blood taken, I’ve been
examined with unbent paperclips and cotton buds (a sensory test… not nearly as
weird as it sounds…). Finally someone tells me what’s going on; I am to be kept
in, and the porters wheel me up to the stroke ward. Great. The lady opposite me
calls out for the commode almost hourly.
I end up being in hospital until Tuesday, during which time
I have an MRI (no massive injections, thank goodness! Although I do get told
off for fidgeting too much…) and a lumbar puncture. Thanks to the doctor
performing the lumbar puncture being an absolute numbskull and forgetting to
tell me not to sit up straight after the procedure, I had the most horrible
post-lumbar-puncture headache (or PLPH), which lasted for about 2 weeks. I was
absolutely fine when I was lying down, but as soon as I got up to eat anything
or to go to the loo, the world would start spinning and I’d start to feel sick…
On the up-side, I did get to freak people out if they happened to see the marks
on my back from where the needle had been in my spine (the doctor had to have a
couple of shots to get it right, which wasn’t great either…).
Around comes Wednesday and my neurology appointment. Except
the hospital haven’t updated their records, so as far as they’re aware, I’m
still an inpatient in another hospital. But they don’t tell me this until I’ve
been waiting around in absolute agony because of the PLPH for over an hour.
Not. Happy.
Eventually (about a week or two later, I think) I see the
neurologist, who tells me that he’s almost certain that I have MS, but that it
can’t be officially diagnosed until I’ve had a second relapse. He thinks that
the diplopia (double vision) was the first relapse, but because it was never
looked at by a neurologist at the time, he can’t prove this. Thanks stupid
doctor, telling me to go to the optician… So I wait.
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