Hi and welcome to our little MS community,
IF the LP results show 2+ Obands (4+ for Mayo) unique to the spinal fluid and hasn't been cancelled out because they were also in the blood, it is definitely abnormal and positive but the LP isn't an exclusive test for MS because Oligoclonal bands are also associated with Lyme disease,
Neuromyelitis optica also known as Devic's disease, Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), Neurosarcoidosis, Subarachnoid hemorrhage, Syphilis and a few other inflammatory conditions....
Your LP results can only be added to all your other suggestive/consistent test evidence eg brain and spinal MRI's, VEP or OCT, neurological (clinical) assessments, blood tests etc and the totality of your suggestive/consistent objective evidence helps to minimise the potential causation list.
If you have unilateral optic disc enlargement (swelling, inflammation) supported with visual evoked potential (VEP) or Optical coherence tomography (OCT), the MRI not picking it up doesn't mean the visual abnormality doesn't exist, if your ophthalmologist has specifically dx you with optic neuritis it's possible the disc enlargement is something like ischemic optic neuropathy.
It's definitely not in your head, there is objective evidence of something being organically wrong but it's not necessarily pointing towards a neurological condition like MS, 8 years is a long enough time frame to have more suggestive/consistent MRI evidence.....id 100% recommend a second neurological opinion which you're already doing, try to breath you've got more tests ahead of you before they're likely to work it out, so be kind to your self for awhile...
Hope that helps..........JJ
I don't know if this is significant but the cell count in my spianl fluid analysis seemed odd:
% of polymorphonuclear 26 (0-6)
% of mono/macrophages 4 (15-25)
But overall nucleated cell count was 3 which is in normal range (0-5). So does the above abnormal results matter if the overall count was normal? I forgot to ask the ms guy about that (probably because I was in the middle of throwing an hissy fit). Thanks again everyone.