Welcome to this site. If this is your first visit, please
take a few minutes to look around. There is a lot more here besides
MS symptoms.
This page about multiple sclerosis symptoms expands on the General Symptoms page, to give a greater account of each symptom and explain where relevant how it has affected me. My initial plan for this page was to keep it factual and formal but discovered I don’t really know enough about the medical background of these symptoms so I can only really relate my personal experiences. Hopefully I have kept it reasonably factual and not too anecdotal.
- Optic Neuritis
- Blurred Vision, Eye Pain, Loss of Colour Vision, Blindness. Any of these conditions can be very debilitating and extremely frightening. I have not suffered eye pain or loss of colour vision but I frequently have blurred vision even during periods of remission and endured near blindness for a period of several weeks during an early relapse.
- Diplopia
- Double Vision. Not so unnerving as neuritis but can be very unsettling. Prolonged bouts can be nauseating, and I found relief only by wearing an eye-patch over one eye. It didn’t seem to matter which eye.
- Movement & Sound Phosphenes
- Flashing Lights when moving eyes or in response to a sudden noise. I often get this at night when in bed trying to fall asleep. Bright flashes of light or even ghostly apparition-like glows from the far side of the room.
- Paresis, Monoparesis, Paraparesis, Hemiparesis, Quadraparesis
- Muscle Weakness. This may occur in the arms or the legs and, I feel, is closely associated with motor control problems.
- Spasticity
- Loss of Muscle tone, possible stiffness or pain and a restriction of free movement of affected limbs.
- Dysarthria
- Slurred Speech. I find this more embarrassing than debilitating. I can hear myself, and I sound like some kind of a moron when it gets particularly bad. For some reason it appears to be worse when on the telephone.
- Dysphasia, Aphasia
- Impairment of communications. In severe case the term Aphasia is used.
- Dysphagia
- A difficulty swallowing, may lead to inhalation of food particles or liquid and cause choking.
- Muscle Atrophy
- Muscle wastage from lack of use. I can vouch for this, from being an active runner, badminton and squash player and a competitive windsurfer with good solid legs to an inactive stick insect.
- Myoclonus, Myokymia
- Twitching muscles. This one keeps me awake at night. I have no trouble with twitching muscles throughout the day, but as soon as I retire at night and start to drift off to sleep the legs start twitching, sometime quite violently, which makes me jump wide awake again.
- Fasciculation
- Don’t know this one from personal experience, but I’ve heard it described as dimpling of the muscles.
- Equinovarus Spasticity
- Footdrop, Foot drags when walking. Coincidentally, this morning, I had a visit from a friend who has primary progressive multiple sclerosis and suffers from, amongst other things, footdrop. He was wearing a device bandaged around his leg with a wire running to a sensor in his shoe, which he told me was called FES – Functional Electrical Stimulation. This detects when he lifts his foot which causes a tiny electrical signal to be sent to his leg causing an involuntary lifting of the foot. This, apparently, helps him a great deal.
- Paraesthesia
- Numbness and tingling. One of my earliest symptoms, which at the time was only in the extremities of hands and feet.
- Frequent Micturition, Bladder Spasticity
- Urinary Urgency. Makes it difficult to venture too far from a toilet as you really don’t know when you will need to empty your bladder. Frustrating as you may feel an urgent need which could last several hours before it develops into a real need.
- Erectile Dysfunction
- The inability to achieve or maintain an erection.
- Frigidity
- The inability to become sexually aroused. Somewhat different from erectile dysfunctionality where arousal exists but the physical response does not.
- Anorgasmy
- Inability to achieve orgasm. Often associated with a lack of sensory feeling in the genitalia.
- Retrograde Ejaculation
- Ejaculating into the bladder. Apparently this is a bladder problem as the bladder opening is not sealing closed at the point of ejaculation to prevent the semen entering the bladder.
- Constipation
- Difficulty with bowel movements. I have a pet theory on this, as I believe it to be a form of muscle spasm. The muscle of the sphincter goes into spasm, or a form of cramp, causing the sphincter to clamp shut effectively closing the door to any bowel movement.
- Fecal Urgency
- Bowel urgency. Along the same lines as Urinary Urgency and can be especially difficult if coupled with constipation.
- Uhthoff’s Symptom or Uhtoff’s Sign
- Increase in symptom severity with heat. My vision is particularly sensitive to this giving me very blurred vision as soon as my body temperature rises. The level of blurring being in almost direct proportion to the temperature rise.
- Romberg’s Sign
- Patient falls over when eyes are closed. Associated with Optic Neuritis.
- Gastroesophageal Reflux
- Impaired sense of taste and smell. My last relapse brought impaired taste with it. It wasn’t that I couldn’t taste the food it just all tasted wrong, quite awful in fact. Although I suspect this was not gastresophageal reflux but nervess to/from the tongue getting short-circuited.
- Sleeping Disorders
- Problems regulating body temperature. Do you ever lie in bed at night shivering with cold and pull up the duvet extra close only to find that five minutes later you are perspiring like mad and have to throw the duvet off? Perhaps worse, you may be perspiring madly but still feel uncomfortably cold and wonder why you can’t sleep.
- Llermitte’s Sign
- Bending of the neck can cause an electrical sensation to run down the spine.
- Vertigo
- Fear of heights, closely associated with imbalance.
- Concentration Lapses
- Difficulty with problem solving and an inability to maintain concentration for any period of time.
- Trigeminal Neuralgia
- Also call Tic Douloureux, Inflammation or constriction of the fifth cranial nerve that can cause intense pain around the face. Stabbing or electric-shock like pains to the scalp, forehead, eyes or around the cheeks and jaws. Considered by many to be the most painful affliction known to medicine.
This list of symptoms is not exhaustive, they are merely conditions I can relate to. Multiple Sclerosis symptoms have many manifestations and can occur in varying degrees of severity with different individuals. Any of the above, or other, symptoms should be referred to your GP or neurologist.
