After being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2011 I realized since I still looked and acted the same as I did before my diagnoses ... so, for the most part everyone treated me the same. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't looking for a pity party. But, perhaps some validation for what I had been going through for probably decades before being diagnosed would have been nice. You see for years I had been running to the doctor with all of these weird symptoms but all of my tests came back normal. It wasn't until the stress of going through a very difficult divorce pushed my symptoms through the roof and I took to the Internet to diagnose myself. After much research I believed my symptoms were related to either Fibromyalgia or MS. Since there isn't a test for Fibromyalgia I went to a neurologist and told him I wanted to have an MRI to see if I had any 'lesions' on my brain, which is used to diagnose multiple sclerosis. He agreed, but told me since my main symptom was pain and HIS professional opinion was that pain is not generally associated with pain.
Well, the MRI showed many lesions and a lumbar puncture was also ordered. This also showed abnormalities associated with MS. This neurologist still insisted I get a second opinion before he would "officially" diagnose Multiple Sclerosis.