Newly diagnosed
Completely confused here. I'm 28 years old and was recently diagnosed with RRMS. My first experience being 2 years ago that was misdiagnosed as sciatica. Now I've been in a police academy and was having the same pains on the same side which the specialist considered to be another relapse. I've been on 3 days IV steroids (2 weeks ago) and its hasn't helped the pain in my leg at all. It's like constant sunburn and knee pain. I'm so frustrated at myself because if I had listened to my body, I would have known something was wrong. I was getting pins and needles since that first experience when running but didn't do anything about it and just ignored it. Then the pain turned into severe burning, electric shocks & weakness and I still just pushed through it thinking it was a long term pinched nerve. Now I've realised that I also have muscle atrophy in my right leg, can this be reveresed with hard work?
On top of all this I'm terrified I'm going to lose my job, I feel as soon as the police find out they'll ill health retire me. My neuro and nurse think I can do the job, it's just a matter of given my body some time to try and recover from this experience. Wondering if the leg pain will ever go away is playing on my mind also.
Just throwing what exactly is going on in my mind.
Hey Harry Don't beat yourself up about not picking up on your symptoms earlier- how were you to know that you would have MS?!? I'm sorry that you have it, it certainly adds significant stress to a young healthy life. I'm 32, diagnosed a year ago. I was lucky in a way as I'm a nurse, I knew that I had MS when my symptoms started so I was able to start treatment 2 weeks into my very first relapse. You're not a nurse mate, you weren't to know. What treatment are you on besides the steroids? I don't know where you live, but I'm on Australia. We are fortunate here that you cannot lose your job for illness/injury or disability as a general rule . You need to investigate your union support and other advocacy agencies in your area . It would be very unfair if you lost your job. If you feel like you can no longer do the physical aspect then you deserve the opportunity to be retrained in a less physical position for the same service. Don't give up pal, MS sucks, but it's truly not the end of your dreams and plans. You might just need to change them slighlty. Ps- i still work full time and have no intention of giving up!
Hi Sarahcall17, I'm in Australia as well :) Have been seeking some advice from some of those in the know, I might be able to tough it out but at the moment all I'm thinking about is my symptoms & if they'll ever go away. I had the steroids 10 days ago with nil affect yet. Just sitting here I get the weird burning/pulling/sunburn feeling. When I walk I start to get pins and needles a bit and I guess what I could say is numbness. My right leg (particularly my calf) is a lot smaller. I've been given the options of Gilenya, lemtrada or tysabri. I'm leaning towards tysabri but will hopefully find out if I'm jcv+ by next week. Now that I've been diagnosed I'm just desperate to try & take control of something & start treatment