This article is part of Health’s series, Misdiagnosed, featuring stories from real women who have had their medical symptoms dismissed or wrongly diagnosed.
Diane Palaganas has been a dancer for most of her life, focusing on hip hop and modern dance and teaching dance in her hometown of Long Beach, California. So when she developed unusual symptoms in her leg in 2013, she wrote them off as a dance injury.
“It started off with tremors and weakness in my right leg,” she tells Health. Palaganas, now 36, also experienced a slight foot drop, a condition marked by difficulty lifting part of her right foot. But she was “pretty athletic” with some of her dance moves, she says, and so she initially assumed her symptoms were the direct result of a move she did where she dropped onto her knee. “I thought it would eventually heal in a couple of weeks. However, it never really went away,” she explains.
When the symptoms in her leg persisted, Palaganas decided to see a chiropractor. “I heard adjustments could help,” she says. Afterward, though, she didn’t think anything had changed. So she went to an orthopedic doctor, who ordered an MRI on her knee.
The MRI showed she had tendonitis (inflammation of the tendon), and she was given a corticosteroid injection to try to help with the tremors and weakness in her right leg. But the foot drop continued, so she decided to see a podiatrist. There, she was told she likely had nerve damage and was referred to more doctors, including a neurologist.
The neurologist performed an electromyography (EMG), a diagnostic test that uses electrical activity to measure the health of muscles and the nerve cells that control them. “He said things were fine,” recalls Palaganas, who continued to feel pain in her leg. “So I continued to bounce around to other doctors looking for pain relief.”
From there, Palaganas was advised to seek physical therapy. One physical therapist diagnosed her with plantar fasciitis, inflammation of the ligament that connects the heel to the toes. She was given a boot to wear at night, along with therapy sessions. “I wasn’t seeing any results, so he asked if I wanted to see a doctor with a more aggressive approach,” says Palaganas. “I was desperate for any answers and pain relief, so I saw a new doctor.”
That doctor, a foot and ankle specialist, said she had scar tissue around her ankle and recommended that she undergo an ankle arthroscopy, a surgery that used a tiny camera and surgical tools to repair the tissues inside her ankle. Palaganas opted for the surgery.
“I was desperate after searching for so long; I thought this would be the answer,” she says. “It wasn’t.” She ended up “bouncing around from doctor to doctor,” until she finally saw a physical therapist—her fourth—who had an intriguing theory.
CLICK : www.health.com/condition/multiple-sclerosis/multiple-sclerosis-dancer-misdiagnosed —