All through my 30s I suffered from what I can now in retrospect say was a long debilitating illness that didn't get diagnosed properly. Now I know that these symptoms are typical of the early stages of MS. I don't blame my doctor for not recognizing it, since the symptoms could all be explained in other ways. My wife kept sending me back to the doctor and insisted that something was wrong with me, but like a normal (right?) pig-headed guy I ignored her and in fact quite often got very annoyed with her. These symptoms included:

• Fatigue: When I complained of being tired my doctor basically brushed me off. I was working a day job plus contract work in the evenings to make ends meet. I have 3 young children and want to be an important part of their life, so I would get the older two up at 7am, get them breakfast and get them ready for school, and drive them in for an 8am start (is it just me, or is starting elementary school at 8am for even Kindergarteners cruel and unusual punishment?) while my wife slept late after staying up all night with the baby. Then I would hit the gym for half an hour of lifting weights before driving to my day job. In the evening after work I would help my children with their homework, read to them, play games with them, and put them to bed, a process that would take an hour or two. After they were in bed I would sit down to my contracting and consulting work, often not getting to bed until 1 or 2am. Then, I'd be up at 7am the next day to do it all over again. On the weekends I'd do more of my contracting and consulting work in between taking care of my kids - I would prepare 3 of the 4 meals during the day, for example. So my doctor said, "No wonder you're tired." When I pressured him, he said I have "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome", which basically was a handy label that meant that he didn't have to treat me.
• Difficulty sleeping: See above. In retrospect, I made my work pattern fit my sleep pattern. I couldn't sleep more than 4 or 5 hours a night so I filled the rest with work. My doctor and I had a little ritual every time I mentioned this: he would ask "Is there any stress in your life?", then we would both laugh and move on to other topics.
• Frequent digestive upsets: My doctor said that I have "irritable bowel syndrome", another one of those handy labels that doctors use.
• Frequent upper respiratory problems: These included sinus infections, bronchitis, pneumonia, persistent sinus drainage and sore throat. My doctors dealt with these as they turned up, but my wife and her family began to notice that these happened a little too often.
• Lack of stamina: Common illnesses would lay me out flat in bed for several days. Friends and family were less than a wellspring of sympathy here - I learned to put up with veiled references to being some kind of a weakling.
• Cognitive problems: These included loss of problem-solving skills and frequent memory lapses. My doctor finally said "You're just getting old" (at age 40). I changed my focus at work and told myself that it was just the intellectual equivalent of a midlife crisis.
• Small numb patches on skin: The first of these happened after outpatient surgery for an ingrown toenail. The bottom of my toe went totally numb. (The surgeon was defensive, and claimed it was a callous.) I noticed that my arms and legs would go numb after time when lying on my back. The feeling would come back when I got up, but without the pins-and-needles that would indicate returning blood flow to a part of my body that had "gone to sleep".
• Vertigo: I would experience terrible vertigo, especially when bending over or lying down. Sometimes instead of spinning, the room would shake back and forth. My doctor looked in my ears and proclaimed that frequent sinus infections (see above) had probably given me inner ear problems.
• Double vision: I'm not sure about this. It mostly happens during vertigo attacks, and sometimes it can happen at random, most often at the end of the day when I'm tired.
• High white cell count: After blood tests my doctor would usually tell me "Your white cell count is a little high, but not high enough to worry about". That means my immune system was constantly in high gear, which is another common symptom of MS.
• Mono: The blood tests that I had in January 2001 showed that I had mononucleosis some time in the previous few months. The Fall of 2000 was bad for me: it started in August with a Summer cold that turned into an entertaining case of sinus infection and pneumonia, and ended in November with laryngitis and another round of upper-respiratory system crud. I already had chronic fatigue so quite frankly I didn't notice the mono. Honestly. If you are the spouse or life partner of a person with MS, please read this twice: The person in your life who is complaining of chronic fatigue IS NOT KIDDING. Don't just say "I'm tired too, honey." Chronic fatigue can be so bad that you can have mono and not even notice it. Is that clear enough? (If you've never heard of mononucleosis, also called Eppstein-Barr syndrome, go look it up on a search engine. It's a common viral disease amongst college students in the US. Most people who have it are confined to bed for a couple of months.)