Diagnosed with depression instead of MS?
Hello All
I would be so interested to know if there are many others like me (I know there is at least one other on this site, so thanks to that person for sharing their info) who were diagnosed with depression / anxiety / somatisation (making up or imagining symptoms) before it was admitted they actually had MS.
Later on this year, I will attend a meeting in Brussels about disability and would like to point out how difficult it is for some of us with our condition to be diagnosed. MS health experts recommend early diagnosis as a priority, but how to do that when one is seen as an attention-seeking hypochondriac rather than someone with MS! (In my case brain lesions had been detected, so it was a case of ignoring the elephant in the room!).
If you do reply, could you say how long the delay you experienced was and whether you are male or female? This might be important, as I've met women who were please to be diagnosed with MS because they thought they were going mad...do men experience this too? Many thanks.
Best wishes, LucyH
@lucyh This is my story, hope it helps. I can somewhat relate to what you said. I'm a male and I was in my final year at university and everyone was attributing my strange and somewhat bizarre symptoms to stress/ear infection etc, even myself at the time (a lot of denial on my part). I ended up being referred to a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with severe depression. All of this while my symptoms accumulated and he was attributing them to side effects of the psych drugs he had given me (visual disturbances). I couldn't take it anymore and went to my eye doctor who referred me to neuro-opthalmology and after that to my first MRI/lumbar puncture. Neurologist examined me and together with the MRI/LP told me that the results he has so far point towards Primary Progressive MS. He prescribed me a 5 day course of IV steroids even though I didn't have gadolinium enhancing lesions. I spent a little over a year as a ?PPMS but on my last appointment he told me that things are pointing more towards RRMS than PPMS now and in the meantime I had what I felt was a relapse in summer 2015 (took IV steroids). So far my MRI remains unchanged (hope it stays this way). For me it was a delay of about 14 months from symptoms to neurologist. In the mean time I did feel like I was going mad, it was the worst period in my life. Even though I have a lot of lingering symptoms (particularly oscillopsia, its horrible) they feel like they subsided a bit. Hope my story helps.
I was never diagnosed with depression more of a hypochrondiact, for a least 10 years I went to see my GP about various problems and ask him if I needed to be tested for MS. He would just blow me off and he knew I had a family history of MS and ALS. Finally he gave me a recommendation for a neurologist when he thought I had badly hurt my elbow. I said they can test me for MS while I am there, he said even if you have it they can't do anything about it. I told the neuro about my family history, he told me he would do a nerve test but my symptoms were typical MS problems. I went through the test and was diagnose with MS. Potter