So this is how it all began, my story of my MS. What my symptoms were, through to diagnosis, and up to now!

2010 turned out to be a very tough year!

In the March of 2010 myself & my partner where in discussions of selling our house & moving, we had seen a house that we had fallen in love with & put ours on the market with the intention of buying the one we had seen.

It was in this same month that I started to have problems with my vision.
It started in my right eye. In my outer peripheral vision I was seeing flashing lights, the best way I can describe it was like the flashing from a sparkler on bonfire night!
I thought I was getting a migraine, I have had these before so I knew what to expect… A violent headache followed by sickness. This never followed though! Instead the flashing continued and I started to get pain in my eye.

Luckily at the time I worked as an optical assistant and so the next day I asked the optician at work to check my eye. She said she could see ‘something’ but didn’t have the equipment to see properly so referred me to the eye hospital. Due to it not being an emergency I didn’t go straight away, instead I waited until the next day (Sunday) and went to Birmingham eye hospital. This hospital is further away for us than the eye casualty in Coventry but they were closed on a Sunday!

Sunday morning, we were up at the crack of dawn and made our way over to Birmingham. We wanted to be there as early as possible so I could be seen quickly.
I had my eyes dilated, that’s painful enough even when ur eye doesn’t already hurt! Again the ophthalmologist could see something but didn’t tell me what. He said he wanted me to have an MRI before he would know for sure. I was referred for this and sent home.

I made my way to work the next day, pain still the same except I noticed everything seemed so much brighter & blurred!

When I got into work the pain and light sensitivity was getting much worse and I ended up having to call a paramedic because it was so bad! 

When the paramedic arrived he decided it would be best if I got seen at A&E straight away and took me to hospital.
I phoned my partner to let her know and she met me at the local hospital.
Because they don’t have an eye specialist at local hospital, a dr had a brief look at my eyes. It became apparent when he was looking at my eyes that I had lost vision I my right outer peripheral, the same area I was getting the flashing lights!
I was told I needed to go to the eye casualty in Coventry.

When I arrived there I had all the same tests again that I’d had at Birmingham and was told the same as I was there but this time I was to be booked in for a field test to check my peripheral vision.
It was about 3 weeks later by the time I had done 2 field tests and was back in for the results. They showed a definite loss of vision so it was then decided I should have an MRI scan.