SIGNS YOU MIGHT HAVE MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS | MS SIGNS & SYMPTOMS

hi everyone welcome back to my channel today's video is going to be a MS multiple sclerosis related video I realize these on for everybody but I do have quite a big audience for MS stuff so if this is your thing then you can just click out and I will see you in the next video but I have talked about doing this video for a while I really wanted to go through what my symptoms were before I was diagnosed so things to look out for and indications that you might have MS now of course I am NOT saying that if you have one or all of these symptoms that you have MS that just simply isn't true there are other conditions and even vitamin deficiencies and stuff like that that can cause the same symptoms but if you're having these symptoms then I think that you should go and see your doctor so if you don't have a diagnosis and you've been having a few of these symptoms or one of these symptoms then you should definitely go to the doctor and just get checked out and see what they say and of course I am NOT a medical professional so I will advise as best I can having looked at websites and my own research but of course I'm not a medical professional so please do your own research and see your doctor don't take my word for things if that makes sense so a bit of a background just in case you don't know I was diagnosed with MS in March of 2017 having had about six months of investigations into what was going on in my body and both my urologist will agree with me and we think that I've had Ms for about 10 years so I've heard of them quite a while and had a lot a lot of symptoms for a long time that were really subtle that I didn't necessarily think it didn't ring alarm bells I just kind of thought that's weird and but looking back I should have been writing all of these things down because when you connect them all up they give you ms so yeah I will start with one of the first things that I noticed years ago and I mean it yes and yes and yes god I did call my doctor for everything one of these episodes so don't assume that your doctor is called a link all of these things up because they just don't sometimes I the first thing I know is sorry I'm looking at my phone cuz I've got them right on my phone first thing I notice was numb patches so I started having done patches maybe when I was about like 19 or 20 something like that and I just thought it's a drop nerve and you know maybe I need some physio yeah I did have a physio session for a trapped nerve and needless to say that did not work I also tried some neurological drugs to stop the basically it blocks the signal from your brain to your nerve in the hopes that it would stop the symptoms so I think I had two known patch on my back and I'd had a nun patch on my arm as well and my doctor thought it was one particular nerve that was trapped in my neck maybe and that was causing both of those things we know now it wasn't but that's what he thought it was at the time and so tried physio I tried these neurological drugs and they didn't work and the drugs are addictive as well so I just didn't want to be on them for very long so I decided just to come come off them and a car remember what they were called now yes I decided to come off the drugs and just weigh it out and see what happened and about two months after I came off those drugs it was back to normal and I didn't have anything I felt great live has come out of wherever it was trapped sometimes he'd get trapped nerves it's like your muscles are inflamed and stuff and I was caught the gym a lot so um so when I came off them I thought nothing of it and then I had another episode I think a few months later where I hadn't unpacked and tingling skin as well and I've always had patches of like tingling the skin so it didn't really again think much of it I just thought that's weird but you know never mind and I went the doctors and he said oh well it's probably another trap live so I went away couple months later it way and it wasn't a big deal I just didn't think anything of it then a couple years later I haven't really had anything that was significant and maybe had had stuff that had come up but like I don't remember it and I started noticing because I was exercising that when I put a head to my chest like that I would have what I can describe as a guitar strum being pulled so if you've ever played a guitar or held a guitar or anything if you pluck all of the strings it will vibrate so how I describe it is having a guitar string right down your spine and when you put your head down like that you entire spine feels like it's vibrating like a guitar strum that is how I describe it so I don't know if other ms people will agree with me on that but that is what I would describe it it's like an electrical sensation as well it's really hard to describe but that is the best I can do so started having that and I had that for over a year I think and I just didn't think anything of it I just thought that's weird I was at the gym doing stuff and I just thought it was weird I didn't really think anything of it I didn't think it was serious I did actually end up going to my doctor about that as well and he was not concerned and that looking back now that's probably my most significant symptom that he should have been like hmm that's strange because it is something that I cannot pronounce obviously it is a well-known MS symptom and lots of people get it and he just didn't think it was anything serious and to be honest that doctor was a bit rubbish he didn't put two and two together he didn't even put one and six together of all the things that I've been known for but yeah he didn't so I went on my happy way not thinking anything of it he was like if it's still doing it in three months time come back and it went so as with MS different types of our mass sometimes in most people if you've got relapsing and remitting ms you'll have a symptom for a while and then it will subside and it will go away and that's what was happening and nobody thought anything of it another thing that I had that was noticeable in the build-up to be diagnosed I was at the gym I used to go to the gym a lot like I used to love the gym it's ago and like circuits class and then I do like two hours in the gym like a lot of cardio and some weight so I loved it I used to go all the time and the one thing that I couldn't do at the gym was run on a treadmill I just couldn't do it I could walk but I'd have to hold on at the side like you know how they've got like bars at the side I have to hold on or hold on the front or something I could never run because I felt like I was gonna fall off and my balance just wasn't right someone else I know has MS as well and they have fallen off the treadmill a few times and it's because of their balance and I didn't think anything of it really I just saw oh I really need to get the hang of this treadmill malarkey and and I've always the same on escalators and stuff like that my balance it's just really really bad um so again didn't we think anything of it which was crazy like I'm saying all these things down I'm like how did I don't know but this is like six to eight years of symptoms um so it wasn't like there were all at once it was like really spread out so it was easy not to connect them um and then I think the only other thing was that I felt like things were more of an effort for me than they were for my friends so bear in mind I was like my early 20s I shouldn't have struggled like getting up from the floor I shouldn't have struggled getting down to get things from the floor but I was and it was because when I was standing up I couldn't balance properly and I just felt a bit funny and I would feel really fatigued and it just wasn't right for a 20-something year old um so there was that and then when I got pregnant hard to see ya there and then I was absolutely fine when I was pregnant which was common with then about three to six months after she was born I think it was been three months after she was born because I got pregnant with Alba pretty quickly I think it was like seven months after she and I was born I was pregnant with Alba so yeah I was in town were in town went into town with the pushchair and I got out of the car and I've tried to walk up the street and I just fell gonna have to stop I can't walk and Steve was like what you mean you can't walk and I said I cannot walk like I literally can't walk and I felt like my hips were fighting against me like my legs just wouldn't move like I couldn't get the signal from a brain to my legs to make them move so I kind of shuffled along to the side of the road beside of the path and I stood there and I felt like an intense vibration like an electrical sensation going from my feet to my hips and from then on I had numb I'm tingling lower legs like pins and needles basically you know when you fall it like when you lie on your arm and or something and it gets pins and needles that feeling in both legs and my lower legs and it's it was up to so mid-thigh when it first started and I found that quite scary so I went to my doctor and I could the thing with it was I couldn't walk for about five to ten minutes so I had to stop and rest and then I could slowly start walking again and I would still get the tingling and it was really bad when I stopped but I could propel myself and make myself go if that makes sense and where is when I first started walking I would feel like I was dragging my legs because it was so hard to walk so that was the biggest thing that I thought something is not right here and I went to my doctor and I said I've got this weird feelings of my legs and I've also got these lumps on my lower back and that was another thing that had come up when I was pregnant that I thought that's weird and I had lots of lower back pain and I've still got those now and they are still unexplained nobody knows what's going on so I think it's just a symptom of a Marisa lower back thing and I don't know still anyway was one leg's she my doctor was amazing and she referred me to for an MRI on my legs and when I got to the MRI appointment they said well it might not be your legs it might be a brain or could be a spinal surgical emergencies so we need to send you Danny they sent me to A&E and they said well if you either got a brain tumor or you've got MS that's what we think and I was just like oh my god okay so they referred me to neurology and when I got my appointment with neuron tree I didn't really know what to expect because they were either looking at like a brain tumor or MS which is really really terrifying and and when I went in they do these like tests with you so they do like balanced tests and reflex tests so the drug like a sharp thing up the bottom of your foot which was horrible and they asked you to close your eyes and walk in a straight line and that was the thing which I all these balance issues I hadn't really noticed them until I was asked to do that test and I closed my eyes and I could not put one foot in front of the other without wanting to fall over and I was just like oh my god I can't believe I've been this bad without realizing it and he asked me to do a lot of other things and I couldn't do them and it was just quite shocking I think that I couldn't do it so I went away and they said well I had an MRI the buchumi an MRI and I had that that week and then they said right go away and we will see you and like a month or two you know we'll get you results and we'll see you in a month or two and then I think like two days later they rang me and said you need to come in and we've had a cancellation you know don't worry we've just had a cancellation so I didn't really think anything of it but I went in and he said it basically sat down he said do you know why you're here and I said well I assume it's for the results of my MRI and he said yeah you've got MS and I said all right okay and that's fine because I was prepared for it like I prepared myself and I thought well it's either gonna be a mess or it's gonna be a brain tumor and I really don't want to be a brain tumor so I felt good that it was a mess I felt relieved I felt like and I wasn't going mad I knew what was up you know I was pregnant currently so there wasn't any treatment I could have at the time but I felt like okay good good we know what it is so we could deal with it and he showed me my MRI and I could not believe how many lesions and he couldn't believe how many lesions are happy their lesions are basically where your myelin basically it's demyelination I can't say that word I'll put a little thing up on the screen of what well the way it is but really bad with the pronunciation and anyway it's where your myelin that is in your body it starts to deteriorate so it starts to affect your nerves and cause all sorts of problems like walking problems balance problems vision problems that kind of thing so he couldn't he could not believe that I had been walking around relatively fine and in the grand scheme of things like it wasn't causing any issues like vision and like I wasn't in a wheelchair like you know that he was surprised that I was so fine and because I had four or five lesions in my brain but then I had a further 20 to 25 or bus five and the ones in your brain affected things like your cognitive ability and I have had some cognitive impairment so I had to go and see a neural psychiatrist psychologist a court remember but she did some tests with me on my basically answer a lot of like grammar and spelling questions which I was in my element because I love stuff like that but and then maths questions which I wasn't so good at that but she basically I had the test that she said I could tell that you are intelligent and that you your grammar and your spelling and your English is really good and your maths is probably where you have struggled before I was like no that's really accurate and she said but you've definitely got some cognitive impairment where your results would be different how do you not have had the impairment I don't know how she knows that but yeah there was some cognitive impairment anyway so by the way I process information it's different now so before I could hear something picking up like that and I'd be fine I'd be able to remember it do it so now if I hear something new I can remember it and retain it but it depends what the information is and I prefer to write things down and read things over over again because it just sinks it a little bit I don't know how it works but it's just different so yeah I think that's it I just wanted to go through my symptoms because I did it in my original FS video but that I also talked about my feelings about being diagnosed and I wanted this to be more about the symptoms so I was diagnosed in March 2017 I had left Rada in September 2017 and I'll go into that at a different video about how I felt about being pregnant so if I'm gonna do like a pregnancy having kids I best video as well and but yeah it's a hard lab trata it's been successful for me there are lots of really serious side effects there you know there's six like thyroid disorders blood disorders there's I have to have multi protest now she goes to my house which was lovely and just really nice and but yeah there's lots of things ever has changed my life in lots of different ways but I'm not scared I feel good as well as a can feel and yes I've made some adjustments to my life but I'm fine what I want you to take away from this video is if you haven't I will leave a list of MS symptoms in the description box below so you know exactly what they are because they are going to be different for everybody I haven't had every single symptom that you get whatever but if you are having symptoms then you have to see a doctor don't put it off don't say oh well it's fine it's just one of those symptoms so I'll be fine no you need to go and see a doctor because early detection can help you have better treatment and be helped the treatment be more effective because the more relapses you have the more advanced the disease becomes and the more irreversible the damage becomes so I have relapsing and remitting ms which means that I have relapses and then I largely recover from them and I feel relatively normal obviously is it it is an auto it is an autoimmune condition so I do get fatigued and stuff like that as well which you're always gonna have that and there are issues like muscle weakness things that stay with me like my tingly legs I've still got those tickly toes I still get restless leg syndrome really really badly and stuff like that but I like a walk I can talk I can see fine lots of things that I've had no patches I've recovered from without issue so that's what we lasted a roommate in ms is you kind of you have relapse and that relapse recedes and you are largely better so yeah if you are having any symptoms or anything like that then please do just speak to your doctor I will leave lots of links and information in the description below my overall advice would just be to see a doctor and make sure you get things investigate it or do not take no for an answer if you believe that something is wrong with you because you absolutely have to advocate for yourself and don't expect doctors to join the dots because they just don't unfortunately and they should but they don't because the NHS is overworked and overstretched and yeah the doctor's appointments are five minutes at a time and they don't necessarily have time ago in your history so you after what I think also really helps us make a list of every single episode that you have so any symptom that you have keep that medical history with you so that you could say your doctor will have had this this has come up but I'm concerned because I had that last year as well and it lasts of two months so if you've got all the days then your doctor might go hmm actually that does require investigation and you're not just going from memory because you do forget things like I just tried to tell you all that there I forgotten bits so just look after yourself and make sure you get a diagnosis even though it is scary it is far better to know what you are dealing with so you can be treated yeah thank you so much for watching please do give me a little comment and give this video a thumbs up as well and I would love it if you would subscribe and would I do pregnancy and MS having kids video soon as well so I would love to see you around for that thank you so much for watching bye [Music] standing underneath the lights look into each other sighs tired snowflakes

Channel: Rhian Gibson

Views: 173,615

Rating: 4.899466 out of 5

Keywords: Multiple Sclerosis, Mum with MS, channel mum, chronic condition, disabled mum, disability, MS, signs and symptoms, symptoms of ms, symptoms of multiple sclerosis, diagnosed with ms, ms diagnosis, rhian Gibson, young mum, tingling legs, numb legs, can't walk, mobility issues, loss of sensation, Lhermitte's, 2019

Id: m9dNx1bTBnI

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 31 2019