I was diagnosed in Aug. 2010 after having a stroke in June, my first surgery was in Sept. and the second in Nov.within one week after the second operation I had a stroke due to low blood pressure. My symptoms began in Dec. of 09 with left side numbness, visual disturbance, and muscle weakness. In June when I had the stroke my speech was effected and my family urged me to go to the Dr. I live in Tennessee and went to Emory Medical in Atlanta for my surgeries. Dr. Daniel Barrow performed the surgeries. I  returned to work in Jan. of this yr. and have some slight weakness in my left hand and no speech problems, other than that I feel pretty good.
I'm 43yrs. old and was never bothered with headaches other than on rare occasion. I have a hard time comprehending having had this all my life. I also cant help but wonder if people just have strokes and die from it without knowing what it is.      

Is MM really rare or undetected? it is both in my opinion.

My Story:
A Stroke which iniciated the investigation. The old nurologist who was diagnosing me knew about MM but never said anything about it since I was not asian. The Old nurologest was blaming my Birth control for my stroke but was unable to find any clot build up signs. The old nurologest schedualed an angiogram to be preformed by a nuroradiologest. The nuroradiologest is like a radiologest but specializes in reading nurological scans. This nuroradiologest just got back from a convension that talked about MM. The nuroradiologest came and spoke to my husband and I about mentioning it to the nurologest that he believes it could be MM, and he said we should resurch it. My old nurolgest said "no way your not asian", we said second opinion please! My old nurologest said "Fine get your second opinion and they will tell you exactly what I have" So we were off to the Mayo Clinic in MN. The Nurologest there asked if we had an angiogram done, and then looked at the images and said it looks like MM.

I believe MM goes undetected since it it missdiagnosed so often. Like most of us we believe all doctors know everything and that is not true as we are finding out. MM is concidered Rare because there has not been alot of resurch(in the past) about it. We are now seeing the diagnosing happing sooner. In my experence Doctors look for the easy fixes, and MM is not an easy fix. I believe the more we spread the word and the more people try to get it in the news the more it will be properly diagnosed the first time.

Becky