Symptoms of Female Hysteria?

Before I was officially diagnosed with multiple sclerosis I thought I was going insane! I had many small symptoms that warranted my attention and brought me to the doctor.

Four years prior to my diagnosis I was 18 years old and remember having tremors and shakes on one side of my body. I went to the doctor's who sent me to a neurologist, but the appointment was weeks away. Two days before my appointment my shakes/ tremors ceased and I cancelled my appointment...how I wish I never did this.

Then when I was 20, shortly after the birth of my son, I noticed I'd awake in the morning with my hands hurting and curled into what looked like a claw. My feet would also hurt and become torqued in a weird position. I never said anything to anyone because I thought it was from working too hard. After all, I was a full time college student and ran my own business.

However, after my daughter was born I was 21 almost 22, I began wetting the bed! I found this absolutely humiliating, so I'd scrub out the urine stain before my husband noticed and I'd flip the mattress. Who would of thought it was something medically concerning? How could I tell anyone? I thought I couldn't control my bodily functions and I was beyond embarrassed to admit it.

During my bouts of incontinence, when I was about the same age, I awoke one morning to my daughter crying. I attempted to get out of bed and stand on my feet. Instead I fell to the floor because I could barely use my limbs and bare weight on them. I found myself using my arms to drag myself across the floor to her. Obviously, I knew at this point there was something wrong! Although the episode of weakened limbs may have lasted 10 minutes, I knew deep down I had something medically wrong with me. So later that day I scheduled an appointment with my general practitioner whom I saw a few weeks later.

When I saw him, I told him about my hands and feet, and explained my mysterious loss of my limbs to him. He ordered a test for rheumatoid arthritis and told me to go on a diet and to exercise. Can you imagine how I felt? The doctor ordered me away with blood work and no concern....I felt insulted, degraded, frustrated and beyond humiliated.

I began to wonder, was I insane? I knew what I felt, I knew that my symptoms weren't ordinary. So why was I being dismissed so easily by my own doctor? I buried all of my thoughts and pains away and pretended they didn't exist. After all, my blood work came back normal. So I was led to believe there was nothing wrong with me other than female hysteria and being overweight. The doctor probably thought I was sitting around shoveling my face full of food in front of a TV, but I wasn't. I was working my store at 60+ hours a week, sheet rocking a house I recently bought and going to college. My problem was I wan't making wise choices as to where to eat because I was always on the go. I was consuming a lot of fast food out of convenience because I lacked time. In fact I was barely sleeping at this point and was completely exhausted, and I began to think was my lack of sleep causing me delusional manifestations? Maybe the doctor was right? Maybe I was overreacting?

I stayed quiet and didn't complain until July 2001, when I was 22.