Tingling and leg weakness, would you pay for an MRI ?

[Orchid90]

I’m 35 , having very odd symptoms and feeling anxious about it .
about a month ago I started with lower back pain , but it wasn’t awful, just annoying and had to refrain from turning patients at work . Im
a nurse .
i stated to feel like my legs were weak, giving out , but not fallen yet, then the pain sort of went away. I then stated with viral respiration illness of some sort, it’s now been 4 weeks and no back pain , cold cough have gone , but I have pins and needles in my legs and hands . Had a couple of episodes where i could not feel the temperature on the sole of my left foot , I just feel like my legs are weak. I can walk but it feels like a conscious effort rather than something you do without thinking. Like my muscle aren’t there to support me .
physio didn’t find anything worrisome, had blood test for all sorts and they were all normal .
i saw a nurse practitioner today who was fairly incompetent, couldn’t find my reflexes in my left leg but she said she can never finds them 😳, asked me to ask my consultant at work ( work in Ed) to get me an MRI, went down the stress route and when I asked for neurology / MRI she just says it’s a 18 months wait , go private .
so now I don’t know which MRI i need to book . Brain and spine , with contrast or without ? It’s gonna cost me 1k for a full MRI and I don’t even know who is going to r/w the results . I feel completely abandoned with my odd symptoms worrying sick it’s MND or a brain tumour and I’ll just find out by getting progressively worse until it becomes obvious and A&E will then take me on.

has anyone had anything similar ? Would you advise me to do anything else ?

I had all of this post Covid , particularly the pins and needles and weird buzzy sensations too, like I had a Duracell battery in a finger or lower legs, along with horrendous back of head headaches where it joins neck sore eyes and weird intermittent spacey feelings - ended up seeing a high end neurologist who did lots of tests on me ( but not an mri) he was convinced it was a viral response that had hit my nervous system and would eventually go away- it did but took 8 months approx!

When I was 21 I had a similar experience. I had leg weakness/numbness, loss of strong hand grip, less sensation on one side, cognitive function reduced and more.
My GP sent me for an MRI immediately (fortunately have a very decent GP who listened to me immediately)
My MRI results showed I had 2 herniated spinal discs. One was quite high and causing the weak hand strength, the other was causing the sensation loss and leg problems. The cognitive function was down to a vitamin deficiency and stress.

Your back pain might mean it could be something treatable like a disc problem once it's diagnosed. Push for an MRI, if you feel something is wrong then trust your instincts and push to be taken seriously.
Don't jump straight to private unless your symptoms are causing significant issues as you'd still have to go through an NHS consultation if you did need any treatment of any kind.

My symptoms that were similar after an MRI showed my bulges between 3 discs in my lower spine. Had a few months of physio and rectified it. My Dr sent me straight to A&E and I had an MRI that day but it was both legs and I do have an outstanding spinal issue. The Dr in A&E said wait list for MRI was 6 months, this was 2 years ago so said let’s just get one now. He did me a solid really.

thank you , I have done a fair bit of reading and tbh it could well be post viral , I hope, you can get neuropathy from it . I am going to demand an appointment with a specific GP which I know is good , as at present I’m just getting dismissed . And I’m not one to go to the doctor at all.in 10 years I have been fro breast lumps / mastitis..bleeding between periods , like genuine things that needs checking out .
i totally understand that I can walk but I’m not making up the way I feel. Definitely getting the buzzing / vibrating feeling too.
I’ll try to find a private neurologist and possibly get an MRI in Italy when I get back home for holidays as it is cheaper there than here . I really shouldn’t have to though.

I work in a private hospital, how it works in my hospital is: we have a GP that you would pay to see £100 for a brilliant consult. They would refer for the in house MRI if they felt that was needed.
Our resident radiologist would report on it and you would go back to see the GP with the report.
Not saying that it is right that you should even be thinking of having to go down the private route, but just some info for if you decide to

Yes I can get an mri lumbar for like 300£ , but the whole spine / brain it’s a lot more expensive . Might start with lumbar spine though at this point as they aren’t going to do anything because there isn’t an obvious strength loss , it’s a feeling I get .

What are your Vit B12 and iron levels? Low B12 in particular can cause pins and needles, being unbalanced etc

if you're keen to spend money on it, you'd be better off being seen by someone who can take a history and do an examination so they can request the right investigations if any are needed. You're not going to find the cause of hand symptoms in a lumbar spine scan.

Can you do choose and book? It’s not 18 months everywhere (4 here recently)

Issues with my spine (bulging in 2 areas) caused sciatica and left me unable to fully feel the back of my left thigh and my left heel. It’s been like this for 2 years and even though the sciatica pain has not returned, the numbing in my leg and foot has not gone away.

The neuro cost me £220 at the private hospital and she’s also the top one at the good local NHS hospital - I often do wonder if I had spinal issues too because that would kind of correlate with the fact my back of head awful headaches were literally where it joins the spine - the weird thing was I did everything the neuro said, Wim hoff breathing, upped my Vit D, lots of stretching, very low dose beta blockers for 2 months to calm me down and one day I woke up and thought ‘I feel normal, where’s the head pain and realised I hadn’t had pins and needles in feet the previous day’ and that was kind of ‘it’ - It is frightening lovely I know, my right side felt in particular kind of much heavier on my leg than my left and noises and stuff suddenly seemed louder in my particular case, but the chances are much higher that it’s something very unpleasant but not necessarily sinister - as others have said disc bulges or viral overload in particular can give you some shocking neuro issues -

well that’s what I asked the nurse at the gp, and she says it’s not up to her , hopefully if and when they ring me I’ll ask where there is the shortest wait . 🤞🏻🤞🏻I’ll travel obviously if it’s sooner .

Thanks for taking time to reply to me .
i am now awaiting a phone call on Monday to see a neurologist as tbh this things are driving me out if my mind . I think the hardest part is that people look at me as if I need a good psychiatrist. I don’t think I am imagining it though.
its such a weird feeling .
did you ever experience random patch of numbness? I get patches of skin that tingle , then I cannot feel the temperature on it , and then it sort of goes away. If it turns out to be a odt viral thing it’s absolutely wild .
glad to hear your resolved in time , surely 8 months it’s a long time though !

@Orchid90. Yep , mine actually started with a weird kind of spacey feeling as if I was going to feint and then started getting burning sensations and my forehead and a feeling like when you’ve got shampoo in your eyes- I then realised that one leg felt kind of heavier than the other and noises seemed very loud , it was like my nervous system was all on ‘grade A alert’ - then about a week after that got the pins and needles stuff in feet multiple times a day and like a buzzing sensation in lower legs and then just 1 finger on right hand - then started with the daily back of head pain - it kind of built and built - about the 4 week point and various bloods and a CT scan on my neck ( as had quite a raised thyroid - but was fine apparently ) I could stand it no longer so booked to see neuro .in my case the low dose beta blockers definitely helped get me back to a less anxious state and my blood pressure dropped- which was good as had really got high with the anxiety - it did all recede but took a long time , to get honest I don’t think they knew exactly what it was but tge neuro ruled out several of the things that I myself thought it might be - wishing you all the best - try not to overthink - I can’t help but wonder if I did far much googling and created a viscious circle