Unusual symptoms and progressive MS
As anyone with MS will tell you, no two cases are exactly the same.
MS can cause damage anywhere in the central nervous system. And depending on where the damage is, it can affect how the symptoms will present themselves.
One of the things to also consider is not just the symptoms themselves, but their severity and the speed at which they can appear.
MS and loss of vision
Some symptoms can come and go. For example, one symptom of MS is loss of vision which can come on either suddenly or gradually and can last from days to weeks, or much longer. The point being, you can’t really put a timeframe on it. The severity will also be different from person to person.
I live with progressive MS, which usually causes a decline in ability over time. Again, it is impossible to put a timeframe on how long this decline will be.
Progressive MS and dropped foot
For me, over the course of 3 years I went from jogging and skipping regularly to using a wheelchair whenever I leave the house. My first symptom was a mild weakness in my right leg, particularly in my foot. The official name for this is ‘dropped foot’ or 'foot drop'.
When I walked, I would have difficulty lifting up my foot and a lot of the time my foot wouldn’t clear the ground. In a rather comical way I would fall over fairly often. Over time this got worse and the weakness extended to my hip (I guess you could call this ‘dropped hip’).
Eventually my right leg was ineffective when it came to walking, and so you can understand why I resorted to using a wheelchair.
MS symptoms are real
All the while, this weakness continued to progress throughout the right side of my body and started to affect my right hand. This wasn’t ideal because my right hand is my dominant hand, and over time I lost the ability to properly hold a pen and write.
Now, this piece is not to scare anyone! I have had a much faster progression than most people experience, and not everyone will have the symptoms I have. But I just want to highlight how different MS can be from person to person.
Some disabilities might be visible and some might not. Some symptoms will be debilitating and others will be very mild. Regardless of how they present themselves, no symptom is any more or less real than another.
