Well, actually I may have had a head start in the diagnosis process. I have been aggressively pursuing a diagnosis for five years, so I think many tests had already been done to rule out lots of possibilities. I have gone through four primary care physicians, and three neurologists with no success, even though I have had to walk with a rolling walker for the last four years. Finally, in January, I gave up. I decided I wasn’t going to subject myself to such frustration any more. I did continue to go to my eye doctor because I have glaucoma. This doctor had poo-pooed my complaints several times about a visual disturbance in the center of my left field of vision. He told me that my eye looked perfectly healthy other than the glaucoma, and “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you”. When a blind spot appeared in the middle of this visual disturbance, I got tough. Finally, I told him that I was losing sight, and if he couldn’t figure out what was wrong, to give me a referral to someone who could. He grudgingly sent me to a retina specialist, who sent me to a neurologist who is also an eye doctor. He’s the one who ordered the MRI. It’s funny. All those years of being made to feel like a malingerer by all those doctors, and now all of a sudden one of them has noticed … “hey, I think she might really be sick.” Oh, the irony! I was completely bowled over when he said MS. At 58, I thought I was too old to be diagnosed with that. Now I find out that it isn’t very uncommon to be diagnosed this late in life.

This message board is wonderful! You folks really do know your stuff. By reading this board, and reading elsewhere, I now believe that I have been symptomatic for over 10 years. I’ve had numbness over different sections of my body, radiating pain down my left leg, and several instances of losing my balance and falling. Even with a walker, I still walk like a drunk.

I didn’t mean to go on so. I’ll be relieved if I don’t have MS, but the more I read, the more I think I do.