Making Sense of Baffling Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms

The first multiple sclerosis symptoms are usually vision problems.

I will never forget the morning I awoke to my first multiple sclerosis symptoms, although I had no idea that's what they were. It would be well over two years before I knew the truth of what those symptoms meant. But before that morning, there was a red flag trying to alert me of something ominous that was brewing. The warning was so ambiguous though, I later questioned if it really even happened at all.

I had a few days of weird left eye pain that I could not explain, so I eventually just dismissed it from my mind and forgot about it. Those multiple sclerosis symptoms of pain weren't just weird, they were surreal. The pain came on so suddenly that I wasn't even sure when it started, never mind what it was or why I had it. The only way I could explain the feeling in my left eye, was that it felt like I got punched hard in it.

Besides the pain itself, I noticed how just turning my left eye caused pain. I had no infection, redness or drainage, and no black eye or bruising. I didn't have any noticeable change in my vision, either. The pain in my left eye was transient and sneaky, it came on silently and left the same way. I certainly was completely unaware of the implication of these multiple sclerosis symptoms.

I now believe that mysterious pain in my left eye was indicative of optic neuritis, one of many common multiple sclerosis symptoms. Optic neuritis is a condition which occurs when the optic nerve, which is the nerve that sends the brain visual images, becomes inflamed or "demyelinized." About 55 % of people with multiple sclerosis will have an episode of optic neuritis, and it's often one of the first multiple sclerosis symptoms presented. (From The Multiple Sclerosis Information Source Book, produced by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.)

When strange sensations mean serious multiple sclerosis symptoms