Dizziness and/or Vertigo
MS patients often develop chronic dizziness, feeling off balance and lightheaded. Some MS patients may develop vertigo, which is a feeling that they or their surroundings are spinning, often triggered by a change in position, such as going from sitting to standing or standing quickly after bending forward, whether to pull weeds in a garden or retrieve an object from the floor.
Speech Difficulties
MS patients will often develop speech difficulties, change in speech quality, or have difficulty swallowing, as a result of MS lesions. Most commonly, patients will develop slurred speech, or their rate of speaking will decrease, partially due to cognitive difficulties which result from the disease. Vocal qualities will develop a breathless or raspy quality, or volume control will be diminished. Patients may also have difficulty chewing and swallowing food, as well as the body’s ability to move food through the esophagus and into the stomach.
Cognitive Changes
About half of MS patients will develop marked changes in cognition, which may range from a hindered ability to learn or remember new information to problems with attention or problem-solving skills.
Patients with MS may also develop psychological changes, both as a result of the damage to the areas of the brains that control emotion and as a result of stress from the disease. Clinical depression is diagnosed more commonly in MS patients than in both the general population and in patients with other chronic, disabling diseases. Patients may also experience bouts of uncontrollable laughing or crying.