Stump the Neurologist!

I've had lots of things happen to me over the years before and after my MS diagnosis. Sensitivity to noise and light, numbness, tingling, muscle spasms, spasticity, weakness, myoclonus, cognitive problems, dysphasia, optic neuritis, nystagmus... I seem to have run the gamut of all possible MS symptoms. But I've had some recurring problems that my neurologist doesn't have an answer for.

Everybody has an internal voice that is 'their' voice. You talk to yourself in your head. Now imagine that that internal voice - you - is suddenly a different and annoying person. Even worse, they won't shut up. This happened to me while getting ready for work the other day. It was my voice in my head, but suddenly I couldn't stand hearing it, and the worst thing was that if it was going to be that way the rest of my life, I wasn't going to be able to handle it. It's hard to describe, but I felt disconnected from my internal voice. Fortunately it subsided and my internal voice became 'me' again, but it was one scary horrible hour.

I've had another similar symptom. I'll be talking to somebody, having a perfectly normal conversation, and my internal voice - the me inside my head - suddenly becomes disconnected from the person that's having the conversation. The worst part is that I have no idea what that person is going to say next. If I just let them continue the sentence (it usually happens mid-sentence) it makes perfect sense, and doesn't sound like I've gone insane. Like I said, hard to describe. I'm not exactly trapped in my head, but I do have the feeling as if somebody else is running my mouth.

Okay, so that's pretty weird. This might be the weirdest one of all - I'm going back in time. Not literally. But during bad flares, I've had the feeling as if my brain is suddenly ten years ago. I know where I am, I know who everybody is - it's not dementia. But I feel as if I'm ten years younger, with a slightly different personality.

I have lesions in the pons, corpus callosum, temporal lobe, Broca's Brain, and other areas scattered throughout the brain.

Here's my latest MRI report: "Brain: Again seen are multiple foci of T2 hyper-intensity scattered within
bilateral centrum semiovale, radiata, corpus callosum, periventricular and subcortical white matter, as well as the right pons and cerebellar hemisphere..."

Am I going crazy? I don't think so, not more than usual. My personal take on it is that lesions in the brain have caused my personality to change, and sometimes sections of the brain are unable to communicate with each other. Perhaps the lesions in the temporal lobe or the corpus callosum has something to do with it. The brain is capable of generating new personality in undamaged areas, so during a flare it would make sense for these problems to appear.

It sure is a mystery, and it's one of those things that points out how little we really know about the human brain.