MS Speaks

Multiple Sclerosis => THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF BEING MULTIPLY SCLEROSED => Topic started by: agate on October 07, 2016, 04:26:39 pm

Title: What someone with a long history of MS looks for in a neurologist
Post by: agate on October 07, 2016, 04:26:39 pm
I've had SPMS for 36 years, and the RRMS that preceded it goes back over 50 years. Someone like me won't be needing a neurologist in quite the same way as a newly diagnosed person or someone younger with RRMS.

Those people are interested in trying different therapies, maybe first one and then another. Or they're interested in establishing a firm diagnosis--or at least in finding out what is the name for whatever their symptoms are.

Someone like me is more interested in writing my own ticket more often--not climbing aboard when a new drug comes along just because it's there, not necessarily wanting to know what the MRI is showing now after the passage of a year, maybe not even interested in drugs to relieve spasticity or bladder problems or gait disturbances.

Neurologists--and doctors in general--seem to feel that they ought to offer your something. After all, you came to see them. Maybe it seems a shame to send someone away with nothing.

But if the patient has reached a point where there is a realization that MS is going to do what it's going to do and it's going to keep on limiting that person's activities severely, sometimes that person just wants not to rock the boat by introducing any new medicines or setting up very many bothersome tests just for the sake of finding out a little more about those pesky lesions.

I'm  happy to say that I seem to have found a neurologist who will go along with this    idea. My previous neuro was also very accommodating even though I kept getting rx's from him, then not ever taking the medicine. Some doctors would have become irritable and fired me as their patient.

I've heard of doctors saying, "If you're not going to take the medicines I prescribe, why are you even coming to see me?"

I can see some point in seeing a neurologist regularly--once a  year or so--even for me, even though I'm not one for taking neurological medicines.  It's someone who presumably cares how my MS is doing, takes an interest in its ups and downs.

How MS treats people later in life is important because there are going to be more and more people who have MS later in life nowadays. It will be interesting to see how MS changes over the years. Does it ever burn itself out in later years, as some have maintained?

Mine shows no sign of burning itself out but at least it's been a slow progression.