Hi everyone I thought I'd quickly visit this topic and revisit it again in the near future. As relating to myself, I often wonder if I've been misdiagnosed. My father has Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and I've found that the risk of contracting Multiple Sclerosis if your father has the disease is approx 1 in 100. Source I don't like those odds. As I've been researching bipolar online I've also found something interesting. Multiple people who actually had early onset MS were diagnosed as bipolar!
The number of patients with Bipolar disorder and MS is significantly higher in the general population than one would statistically expect which may suggest that some connection between Multiple Sclerosis and Bipolar could be possible. It is known that the MS causes changes to the white matter of the brain which is also the case with mania but whether the origin and the chain of events leading to MS and Bipolar are similar is unknown. Source
During the summer of 2010 (first summer with my bipolar diagnosis) while I was on multiple medications for Bipolar I remember feeling a sense of dread as the strength in both of my forearms began to disappear. They felt tingly and weak. It eventually went away. Could this have been a sign of MS? Could the multiple medications I'm on be masking other symptoms? I wouldn't be reaching so far for an explanation if my father was healthy. I found a fellow blogger who seems to have experienced a lot of the same things I have, however her misdiagnosis of bipolar was corrected when more prevalent symptoms of MS began to appear. Link to her page here.
Other sites have stated, "Multiple sclerosis 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. These symptoms may lead to a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, hypomania, cyclothymia, histrionic personality disorder, or similar disorders." Source
I suppose I will never know if I have MS until more prevalent symptoms begin to present themselves. Who knows, only God, right?
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