Has anyone experienced this?

[meg321]

For a long time i would wake up during the night or early morning and would touch my face for whatever reason and it felt as if someone else touching me...i could feel it on my face but not my hands....it startled me a lot of times.

hugs, meg

[Quixotic1]

Of course, you are right about personalization.  I was just trying to get the funny farm comment in.  But, your story does bring up a point.  Was your episode within a couple years of the onset of your other symptoms?  MS can have and present with a very wide variety of psychiatric syndromes include frank psychosis.  When these happen often a person's diagnosis gets derailed and all of their subsequent symptoms are dismissed as also psychiatric.  A similar thing happened to Santana.

Some of the odd phenomena:

Mild dementia
cognitive difficulties
Aphasia
Apraxia
Neglectother severe language impairments
Dysphasia
Dyslexia
Mood disturbances, including major depression
Suicidal ideation or attempt
iIappropriate euphoria
Uncontollable laughing or crying in situation that doesn't warrant it
Delusional states
Episodes that appear to mimic schizophrenia

Where is Santana???? She was here a minute ago - but she's GONE???

I'll go shout out to her.

Meg, Jen is right.  The reason behind feeling like a part f your body is not yours is more likely due to damage to a sensory input.  The brain "expects" things to feel a particular way.  When it doesn't, immediately there is some "doubt" that this is the right part of your body, or that is really is your body.  You realize pretty quickly that this feeling is wrong and it is your face.  On the other hand if you persistently denied that a part of your body belonging to you, despite evidence (looking in a mirror), this would creep over into the psychosis that I mentioned above, and could still be a part of MS.

Quix

[Deb61]

There's no pattern.  However, I will feel worse when I've overextended myself or am overheated.  

It is weird, and I like to talk about.  Not to complain to anyone, but it's so weird that I have to tell someone!  That's part of the reason that I like this forum so much.  I don't want sympathy, I just want someone to help me make sense of things--if that's possible!!!!  

[meg321]

I am starting to feel like i belong..this is all so bazarre,  There is one thing you can say for this, is damn interesting...that is if you are having a good day.  Sometimes you just dont give a s**t.

Is there a pattern at all as to when you will have a good day or bad day? Sure difficult to make plans.

hugs, meg

[shoshin]

I have the opposite problem. Sometimes I touch part of my body and my hand feels like me, but not whatever I'm touching. This usually happens at night, in the dark, in bed. If I touch my thigh, I think it's a pillow for a while and it's a really bizarre feeling to realize it's part of me. Weird, I know.

I do think I have proprioperception problems. The last time I had to do the "move your foot up and down your calf" thing, I had to look in order to find my leg with my foot.

The first time I saw the neuro who dx'd me, he did a test where he was moving my toes up and down while I wasn't looking. He didn't tell me he was doing this and all the sudden he asked me if I could feel him moving my toe. I freaked out and looked down really fast. Sure enough, he was moving my toe and I couldn't tell at all. I could tell he was touching my toe, but that was all.

Oddly enough at my last neuro exam for the trial I'm in, I think I passed this test. I couldn't tell which way my toe was pointing, but I could sort of feel the neuro pressing more on one side than the other so I could guess. I feel like I cheated, though.

It reminded me of one of my childhood softball coaches who used to put his hands behind his back and have us guess how many fingers he was holding up. He held up the number of fingers just before he put his hands behind his back so I always knew how many. I got to go first for a while all the time, but then I felt bad and told him.

I'm not sure if those are two different things--not knowing the position of part of your body and not feeling like some part of your body is really you when it's in contact with something else. But they're both weird.

sho

[jensequitur]

I've actually experienced depersonalization, and it's not pleasant.  I think it was pre-diagnosis - I would be talking to somebody, and discover that not only did I not have any idea what I was going to say next, but that it felt as if I wasn't even involved in the conversation - somebody else was having the conversation, not me, and I was just listening in.  It's a very unreal sort of sensation.  I thought I was going slowly insane.

No, what you guys are talking about is proprioperception.  The feeling as if you don't really know where your arm is, or where your leg is.  Or even if it's your leg.  Your leg could be sticking straight out, or it could be down on the ground, but without looking at it, you wouldn't know.  This also comes along with a real not-there sensation.  

I get this often in my left leg - I had a good five minutes the other day of my leg not being there, even though I knew I was standing on it.  My left arm, too.  It's different than typical numbness, like if it was asleep.  It just doesn't feel 'there.'

I'm all about living at the funny farm.  You get to play ping-pong in your bathrobe all day.  What could be wrong with that?

[Momzilla]

Yes, it does sound like depersonalization, but I do know that feeling -- left arm.

Basket-weaving, trivet-making and a dangling conversation.  Sounds perfect.

Zilla*

[Quixotic1]

Mine doesn't happen on my face, but with my hand.  When the weakness in my right arm flares up, sometimes I have the worst time doing anything with my right hand.  Not only does it feel weak, but it feels like I am trying to manipulate someone else's hand.  It's not numb, I can feel it touch things like the keyboard or a glass, but it feels foreign and not a part of me.

A shrink would probably call this depersonalization and ship us all off to a funny farm - which actually sounds rather pleasant.  Anyone for a little basket weaving and unrelated conversation?

Quix

[Sarahsmom46]

If you want to answer everyone who posted, just put "All" in the "to" space.  Hope that makes sense.  

Julie

[meg321]

thanks, this is too weird to even try to talk about. I find all of this very interesting to me.
By the way, how do answer on hear if you are typing to everyone in general?

Do you need to put a name in the "To" space?  guess i will find out,

huga, meg

[Sarahsmom46]

We all seem to have these crazy parethesias.  Mine is feeling water dripping down my left leg.  That took some getting used to, let me tell you.  Now when I get that sensation, I don't run to a discrete place to see if it is real or not I just say to myself "its only a parethesia."  If it does become the real thing someday, then that will be a different issue entirely.  :)

Julie

[OperaMBA]

Mine is a bug crawling sensation on the nose and along each cheekbone.

Richard
OperaMBA

[Deb61]

I get lots of weird feelings on my face--but usually during the day.  I sometimes feel like I'm drooling out of the corner of the right side of mouth--but when I touch my face, there's nothing wet.  I also get the feeling of bugs crawling through my scalp (staying on the right side of my head).  I can't tell you the number of times that I have my husband looking through my hair for lice--and not finding any evidence what-so-ever of having it.   Plus, I feel this a lot--I feel like someone is brushing a feather on the right side of my face.  Sometimes, this phantom feeling will even give me goosebumps--but only on the right side!  Deb