Over several years I have had doctors think I might have MS. I have two blood aunts who have it and one brother who has it. And I am really beginning to feel like I have it. My symptoms could not match it better. • Muscle cramping (my neck, my side, my calves and thighs, my feet and toes and occasion my toes. Sometimes my head yanks to the side when my neck cramps) • Bladder , bowel, and sexual dysfunction (like no sex drive period) • tremor • facial weakness (My face will sag on right side) • Heat intolerance (I get over heated VERY easily, five minutes of walking and I am sweating. Being in heat outdoors immediately overheats me. I have had a couple of incidence where I have been found laying face down in the dirt at work or passed out in the house) • Fatigue and dizziness (I suffer from extreme fatigue, but when I lay down I cannot sleep. I do get dizzy all the time as well, the ground swirls around me a lot) • Pain (I have pain about 95% of the day. It used to be slightly controlled by Ultram, which you asked me to discontinue) Now it is sit at my desk and cry, or at a birthday dinner this last weekend I had to leave I was in so much pain I had to leave. I could not straighten my neck and my back was in spasm • With regard to attention span, concentration, memory (I forget what I am doing from moment to moment, cannot concentrate and have to read items over and over to figure them out, and have a very poor memory) • Numbness or weakness (my legs or feet will go numb and my arms go numb while sleeping) • Double vision or blurring of vision (my vision has gotten blurry and they are constantly hurting. My right eye in particular will go kind of cross eyed or seem to sag) Dry eyes • Tingling or pain in parts of your body (my jaw and lower face seem to tingle and sag. Sometimes it feels like ants crawling in my jaw. My jaw often feels like I just got down with the dentist ) • Electric-shock sensations that occur with certain head movements. When I move my head to the right it sends a shock down my back and then left leg) turning of the neck causes an electric shock–like shooting sensation extending into the arms or down the back • Bladder problems. Peeing when I sneeze or cough, bouts of diarrhea or constipation. I also have to go the bathroom a lot • Tremor, lack of coordination or unsteady gait (I have a very poor sense of balance. I stumble over flat carpet, trip over nothing, and walk like I am drunk) • Slurred speech • Feeling depressed • Having a hard time expressing myself (I used to be a speech writer for City of Denver and DIA) and now I cannot find words or say them • Thinking • Losing my temper fast or not being able to tolerate people, when I have always been known for my great ability to get along with even the most horrid people. • I have issues where I have not been able to swallow easily. It feels like even my spit gets caught in my throat and I start to choke. • I have not been formally diagnosed with seizures, but I wonder if the experience I had last April 23rd when I was taken to the hospital for a stroke was not actually a seizure? Especially when they wound up calling it a TIA • Pain in my chest. Hurts to breath most days, in the middle of my chest. • Swelling in my wrists • Tingling crawling sensations, especially when I am trying to settle down for something. Long typing sessions or to sleep. • Itching. My skin always itches • Occasionally my head bobbles • I have noticed a difference in strength and tone in my arms. My right arm is stronger • Having a hard time processing what is said to me. I have to think about it three or four time before I can understand what is being said to me. • Loud sounds really bother me, I can hear people chewing food three cubes down from me. I get a ringing sounds in my ear about once a week. Sometimes like now….just a high pitched tone I am sending this to you so that it gets read. I know sometimes our appointments are so short, Dr. Tyler (my last GP) suspected that I had MS. But we did not get around to the tests before he left. My new young GP basically wants to give me pills and send me home. Will not even cross the room to check my pulse or listen to my heart. I used to be very physical. Rugby, rafting, mountain biking, snow shoeing, skiing, canoeing, rock climbing, swimming, dancing, horsehoes, ATV riding, Horseback riding, ziplines, camping, hiking, skating, surfing, scuba, snorkeling, baseball, Frisbee, golf, basketball, volleyball. If it was a game and I could compete I was all for it. And then add all the things I have to do around the ranch, fixing fence, throwing 100 pound bales of hay, emptying 80 lb bags of feed, sorting animals, loading 80 lb pigs, loading 200 lb lambs, butchering turkeys, chickens, lambs, hogs, goat. Gardening, weeding, pulling weeds, processing all the food from the garden. Make cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt. But now I am finding myself so tired that I am not getting a lot of things done. I am so tired I cry all the time because I am so tired. I am in constant pain. It seems like all I do is whine about it. This is not me. I could bust a arm in the rugby pitch and still finish the game with a little duct tape. I would get a cut, wash it with water, slap vasoline on it and wrap duct tape around it and it would heal. Now it take a year for scabs to go away, my nails are so brittle they split and crack. We eat all organic. We manage out calories and I still cannot keep the weight off. I cook mostly a heavily Mediterranean and Indian diet. Fresh, barely cooked or raw. Sugar is the sugar I grow, honey is the honey I harvest. None of the animal meat we consume has any antibiotics or hormones in them. I have a greenhouse to provide us with the majority of your greens all year long. I harvest sweet and potatoes, carrots, beets, rutabaga, spinach , chard, herbs (Lots), corn, squash (7 types) okra, tomatoes (15 types) beans (green, yellow, pinto, black, red, white) We grow our own wheat and do a nice once grind on it before we put it into storage. Then I grind it as needed, so it remains in the whole for as long as possible. We also manage our own amaranth, field corn, soy beans, bulgar wheat, barely, hops. We make our own beer and wine (Great for gifts) and tend out own apple, peach, pear, cherry orchard. As well as black and green grapes, black berrys, and one small kiwi plant. We have lemon, orange and lime trees that we keep indoors and harvest from all year. We feed out stock animals from the grains we plant for them, or they graze. They take longer to get to harvest weight vs. the type that use hormones, but the meat is tender and well defined. We do buy seafood from whole foods and we trust that it is sustainably and organically grown and harvested. We either fish for catfish on our own or buy from fisherman that we respect. We have out well water checked twice a year and it always has the highest quality. So I am trying to do the best I can diet wise and health wise. I do not have a history of drug use, I do not like the feeling of being out of control. I do have a drink every now and then, but most of the bottles of liquor in house wind up getting pitched because they are to old. I walk 3 miles a day, between work and the houses on the ranch. When I am home during the weekend it is a lot more than that. Weight lifting is pretty much the animals and feed. When you throw 25-30 100 pound bales of hay a day as well as cleaning out bedding everyday and throwing new bedding in there. Emptying water containers every day and filling them up. I modeled well into my 40’s and now it is all I can do to brush my hair. Sometime I forget too, sometimes it just hurts to much. I very rarely put make up and really do not care how I look. Clothing hurts. By the end of the work day I am so claustrophobic and itchy and irritated by my clothes that I just want to scream. But what scares me the most, is that I am having a hard time thinking. Processing thought, getting lost in the project I was working on at the moment. I have let my art studio get covered in dust. I have gotten down to only two to three books a week instead of 6-7. I have even forgotten where I was or where I was going. This cycle has really been going down hill strongly since I had what they classified as a “stroke” last April. Then they said it was a TIA. But they did not check to see if it might have been a flare for MS. My brother has severe ones. They debilitate him to the point where he is out of work for weeks. My aunts have flares were they have to use a walker. I have been the type to always try to grin and bear it, but I am starting to get scared. I have worked with major back issues for years because I do not want to wind up in more pain, so I do yoga and keep busy and learn to deal with the pain. I work when I am sick, I worked and skied up to the day before my oldest was born. I worked with casts on from broken legs or arms. I went back to work two weeks after I start chemo. Maybe not my best performance, but I worked and never said anything about it. But now that I am feeling so awful when I do go to the doctors and they say try this and it doesn’t work, or you can’t possibly have that, then it just makes me want to say nothing. But with my mind starting to play games I am freaking out. Plus I cannot control my internal heat at ALL anymore. I am scare, tired, and afraid of another doctor that does not have the time or the care to find out what is wrong. You were very good to me at my first visit. You believed in me and are helping me. But I would rather have MS diagnoses and know what I should or should not be doing to make myself well, then live with a misdiagnoses and treating Fibromyalgia when it is now. Please help. I really feel like I am just falling apart and I am not the type to do so. Today my calf muscle feels like it is shredding to pieces everytime I walk. Thank you for your time and consideration. Laura Keith