My Weird and Downright Bizarre Symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis

If you have MS or know someone who has MS, you surely have witnessed feeling or seeing some rather bizarre symptoms.  Due to the fact that Multiple Sclerosis is a disease of the central nervous system, virtually any part of your body connected to nerves can be affected.  This includes the top of your scalp right down to your tippy toes.  It also can include your cognitive and mood centers.  This disease seems to have mood swings of its own.  One day your right arm may be affected, the next day your vision may be distorted, on yet another day your gait may resemble a drunken sailor.  MS is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are gonna get.  Okay a really awful box of chocolates. 

Some of the weird bodily symptoms I have experienced in my first year of my disease have included numbness for specific patches of skin.  I have felt a portion of my scalp go numb as well as the roof of my mouth and top lip.  I have also experienced the feeling of ants or creepy crawly bugs running up my leg.  I have also had the feeling of my leg being immersed in warm water when there is nothing there.  These are but some of the seonsory illusions this disease can create.

What has been the most strange for me, however, are not the bodily symptoms but the cognitive and mood issues. 

I am here to tell you that MS can sometimes make you feel pretty darn good.  I know everyone talks about the depression and anxiety which seem to go hand in hand with Multiple Sclerosis but did you also know that MS can also cause feelings of euphoria? 

It's true.  Check this out.  On a web site called Wrong Diagnosis, they discuss the misdiagnosis of mental disorders for people who have Multiple Sclerosis. In an article entitled, Misdiagnosis of Euphoria, the authors state:  "Multiple sclerosis is often misdiagnosed as mental disorder: The early stages of multiple sclerosis may cause various general feelings of wellness, happiness, euphoria, or manic-type symptoms in some patients."

And I have personally experienced these feelings of euphoria during this first year following my diagnosis.  This is a very tricky issue because I have always felt like I may be on the mood disorder spectrum.  I do experience hypomania or times of heightened energy.  So what is caused by mood disorder and what is caused by MS?  It is one of those questions like which came first, the chicken or the egg.  Let's face it, neurological disorders cause mood disorders. We are biological beings.  And if things are misfiring up there in our mood centers, we can expect a wide array of symptoms.

I was most surprised when the euphoria would hit me out of the blue, usually preceded by a feeling of slight dizziness or bright flashes in my periphery.  It was like grasping onto a most pleasant sensory memory of the perfect summer day as a child where you don't have a care in the world.  Sometimes these feelings last for hours and the whole world seems vibrant and alive.  And just as soon as it comes, the feeling departs and I am left to wonder if it will ever come back.  As much as the brain is capable of lowering us to our melancholic depths, it is also able to create emotional highs as well.   Since my diagnosis of MS, I have been feeling this range in mood quite acutely.