recently diagnosed with MS, struggling with optical neuritis, any tips for coping?

[FlaGranny]

1. I have MS too.

I have a rather mild form, but have had lifelong weird symptoms - seeing dark objects move in my peripheral vision, various episodes of nerve pain, clumsiness, and vertigo. It's hard to recount them all. My vision is affected the most on testing, but not to the point of actual loss of vision and thankfully, to this point, no optical neuritis. There's not much you can do except cope. Are you taking an anti-MS drug and/or prednisone? Your MS sounds severe enough to give them a try, as I'm sure your neurologist has suggested.

One thing I would mention is that I was recently diagnosed with celiac disease - at the AGE OF 71! It had never occurred to me I could have such a thing, but I did have many of the symptoms. After being diagnosed with celiac I started researching it and found that it can mimic MS, even down to causing plaques in the brain (which I do have). So now I'm not 100% certain whether my MS could have been caused by gluten intolerance. Of course I could have both celiac and MS - they are both autoimmune diseases and autoimmune diseases can be concurrent (and genetic). Celiac disease is much easier to treat - just avoid gluten. Most of the symptoms of celiac are caused by vitamin deficiencies - thus the wide range of symptoms and the difficulty diagnosing it. If you have ANY symptoms of celiac, I would suggest you ask to be tested.