I had my meeting with the neurologist this morning.
She said that all of my brain and spinal column look very healthy, and there are no signs of ms that she can see. She said at this point, she would put my chances of having ms pretty low, but it's one of those things that she can't say positively one way or another of course.
At this point, she is fairly certain that the numbness in my hand/arm is likely due to an injury from a few years ago when I compressed the ulnar nerve in my elbow. She is concerned by the loss of strength as well as the increasing stiffness in my hand that it's causing a lot of damage internally, and wants me to have an emg and a consult with an orthopedic surgeon as soon as possible. It sounds like surgery is in my near future though. I thought I'd avoided it when I was originally injured 5 years ago, but it looks like it's coming back to bite me.
So, thankfully, at this point I feel it's safe to say that I don't have ms, but it is definitely something I will keep an eye on, considering some of the other possible symptoms. She did comment that sometimes it can take several years to diagnose, but at this point she didn't feel it was necessary to follow up with any of the other invasive tests until my ulnar nerve was dealt with. I feel pretty comfortable with that at this point.
Thank you all for your support and help
I will check in occasionally to see what's up
