1. Ensure Your Financial Security
Multiple sclerosis, commonly referred to as MS, takes time to diagnose. Once you get a diagnosis, treatments begin. Without insurance, MS can drain your financial savings and cause financial hardship. Health insurance, life insurance and disability insurance protect you by covering part of the expenses involved in treatment and compensating for a loss of income in the event you can no longer perform your job. You must line up insurance before you pursue tests to diagnose MS. Once MS shows on your medical record, obtaining insurance becomes more difficult and costs more.
2. MS Not Most Likely Suspect
Most primary care physicians look for other symptoms, causes or diseases before considering MS. Other explanations for symptoms might include a pinched nerve, negative reaction to a virus, a migraine or other common condition. MS causes confusion because the symptoms vary widely from case to case. Most people achieve a diagnosis by process of elimination through tests for other conditions. A majority of the time, MS occurs without a family history. Certain conditions like lupus, multiple strokes, vitamin deficiency and brain infection mimic MS, often resulting in an incorrect diagnosis.
3. Get a Specialist's Advice
Once you suspect MS, you need to visit a neurologist. Even if your primary care physician orders a neurological exam, he may miss subtle deficits that a specialist is trained to catch. When testing for Romberg's sign, the neurologist looks for clumsy movements not caused by weak muscles. L'Hermittes sign indicates lesions on the spinal cord in the neck. Symptoms for it may include a buzzing or tingling sensation similar to that produced by electric shock. To test for Babinski's sign, the neurologist runs a semisharp object along the bottom of the foot. In a normal response, the toes curl downward, but with MS the big toe moves upward. Even with these symptoms, the diagnosis tends to be probable or possible MS.
4. Lesions on the Brain
An MRI scan shows high-resolution images of the brain. Multiple sclerosis lesions appear as paler areas on the image. The location of the lesions often explains why certain symptoms, like a numb left hand or loss of hearing in the right ear, occur. Other neurological diseases can create lesions on the brain, so an MRI alone won't suffice to diagnose MS. Older lesions may heal and not show up on the scan. When accompanied by symptoms and other signs of MS, the diagnosis moves from probable to definite.
5. MS Slows Down Neurons
Another type of test used in diagnosing MS is the evoked potential test. There are three different tests that measure the time it takes the body to respond to stimuli. Visually evoked potential tests measure optic nerve response. Clicks or beeps stimulate a response for brain stem auditory evoked response, and somatosensory evoked potential tests use electric current to test different junctions of the body. The majority of people diagnosed with definite MS exhibit abnormal response times to these three tests.
