Hello

[Guest guest]

Hi,

My name is Debbie and my Mom may have MSA. There is no definite

diagnosis for her yet. About 3 years ago her health started to

decline. She had terrible pains in her legs, seemed to be " slipping "

mentally, and had trouble walking. For a while the Dr told us it was

Fibromyalgia but also thought she might have PD too. He prescribed

Sinemet and it seemed to help her pains somewhat. Relatively

recently she was hospitalized for dehydration, but while in rehab it

was the nurses there that told us she really seemed like a PD

patient to them (nothing definitive had ever come from her Dr). Upon

researching PD, I see lots of similarities: the stooped posture,

rigity, small shuffling steps, facial mask...she doesn't have

tremor. Now the Dr is saying she has an " atypical Parkinsons " so I'm

researching further and she seems to have many of the symptoms of

MSA.

I'm not sure what really defines " difficulty with urination " but one

minute she's fine, then she suddenly has to urinate (with urgency)

then she'll find she can't relieve herself unless the sink water is

running. She certainly has urination frequency at night, also the

orthostatic hypotension, it's hard to say if Sinemet really helps

her much now or not. She's also got dementia...I haven't seen that

mentioned in conjunction with MSA.

anyway, I just wanted to introduce myself, I've printed out some

articles on MSA that I want to show to her Dr. She's currently back

in the hospital undergoing more tests...and now has trouble with her

heart (atrial fibrilation). It's pretty upsetting how quickly she's

gone downhill in the past two months....she was always such an

active woman and now she has no quality of life at all.

thanks for reading this

Debbie