I don't know why they ask you to do this do you? What does it mean? what are they looking for? what is supposed to happen and what does it show if it doesn't? I think this is just one of those things tey do, like ask how are you today, and not listen if you tell them. So what if you miss your nose? Does it make a difference how fast you can do it?

They do it to see if anything neurological is going on. Since you obviously have MS, do you think you are having a relapse?

I have had to do this several times, it's kind of like them doing the Babinski test - same reason.

I failed miserably upon onset years ago, but it was as I was going paralysed on left side within hours. Was just like I was having a stroke.

Failed another time as well...

I have done that test for the last 18 years and I always touched my nose and then her finger and what shows up is a tremor when matching it up.

When my neuro asks me to do that sometimes I can, sometimes I cannot..... early in the day is better, later is worse.

I can no longer write using my right hand and still trying to learn with left hand soooooooo I just keep trying !!

Try you best during the testing and if your Neuro is only working with MSers (as mine is) he/she will understand & know that some days are good, some are NOT....

I ALWAYS FAIL THIS TEST...I THINK THEY TRY AND TRICK ME...DR'S!

Thanks for Replying. Especially iamwoman's comment that sometimes it's better & sometimes it is worse.

It's strange that we can understand that others don't understand & call us lazy sometimes becaus we CAN do something at on time the we say we can't another time. It's easy to understand that they don't have MS-so they don't know.

But do you ever get to the point that YOU don't understand and it become CRAZY MAKING!!!

I read your replies & calmed down a lot. I thought this is like the Proprioception sense..Knowing the position of body in space... that make star at their feet for the hands. I looked it up in Wikkipedia & got so excited this is ME!!!! Down to & including the dificulty I have controling voice volume, sore muscles. At that appointment when we left exam roo, the doc was at the place where they write the notes from the exam. She was writing like mad!

I told her so much w/o realizing what I was telling her. I think I will take a copy of this wikkipedia definition & tell her more specific situations.

I'm so excited, I'm damn near shaking!! It's not craziness. It comes out of lesions on the cerebellum. Maybe I was in a relapse?
If so I have been it one for a long time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception

Proprioception (pronounced /?pro?pri???s?p??n/ PRO-pree-o-SEP-shun); from Latin proprius, meaning "one's own" and perception) is the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body. Unlike the six exteroceptive senses (sight, taste, smell, touch, hearing, and balance) by which we perceive the outside world, and interoceptive senses, BY WHICH WE PERCIEVE THE PAIN("I called it muscle soreness") and the stretching of internal organs, proprioception is a third distinct sensory modality that provides feedback solely on the status of the body internally. It is the sense that indicates whether the body is moving with required effort, as well as where the various parts of the body are located in relation to each other.

Law enforcement
Proprioception is tested by American police officers using the field sobriety test where the subject is required to touch his or her nose with eyes closed. People with normal proprioception may make an error of no more than ***20 MILLIMETERS. People suffering from impaired proprioception (a symptom of moderate to severe alcohol intoxication) fail this test due to difficulty locating their limbs in space relative to their noses.

Conscious and unconscious proprioception
In humans, a distinction is made between conscious proprioception and unconscious proprioception:

Conscious proprioception is communicated by the posterior column-medial lemniscus pathway to the cerebrum.[6]
Unconscious proprioception is communicated primarily via the dorsal spinocerebellar tract,[7] to the cerebellum.

Oliver Sacks once reported the case of a young woman who lost her proprioception due to a viral infection of her spinal cord.[9] At first she was not able to move properly at all or even control her tone of voice (as voice modulation is primarily proprioceptive)
Later she relearned by using her sight (watching her feet) and inner ear only for movement while using hearing to judge voice modulation. She eventually acquired a stiff and slow movement and nearly normal speech, which is believed to be the best possible in the absence of this sense. She could not judge effort involved in picking up objects and would grip them painfully to be sure she didn't drop them.

This IS ME & IT HAS BEEN ME FOR A LONG TIME!!

I describe to her my walking was "spactic"
To the point of some high school teenages crising drove by and shouted out to me.."Stop drinking you Alcoholic"

Did I tell you my last MRI had increasing old lesions in cerebellum? I'm not recognizing when they are new.

how many "normal" people can do this without fail...but i did it with no problems while my dr had to hold me up.
come on, really? this test seems insignificant to me.

we left this one alone a long time ago.

Crazy4ms, it doesn't sound like you have a very good neuro...he actually made you stand to do this test? You better get a more competent neuro who understand neurological testing and how to do them.

Did you confirm he is board certified? He may not be, he if he doen't understand how to do neurological testing. I know where my doc got her medical degree, I( googled to find the papers she wrote.) She's married to a doc. Medicine is in the blood stream of this family. SHE knows how to do nuerological testing,I bet her husband does too, though he is not a neuro...they teach it in the general med stuff, before they specialize.

If your guy was having you stand to do them. he doesn't know. You might want to check where he got his medical degree, if he got one.

i think crazy4ms was trying to get at the same point i was trying to make. OK, so its a test to see if anything neurologic is going on, but most of us know something neurologic is going on. so if last week we caould touch our nose and this week we can't and then next week we can who cares? I know there are neurologic signs, like the babinsky (sp?) but they are really just all pointers to the fact that maybe something isn't right. ESpecially if you know you have MS. I think Crazy4ms might have been trying to say that if she can't stand without assistance, what difference does it make if she can touch her nose or not? It's like documenting that you have a hangnail while you are at the hospital because your arm has been nearly cut off. Its just not significant.

It can be significant since it can tell them whether or not current activity is going on, thus possibly needing immediate treatment. Meaning, if you go in with existing issues NOT due to relapse, and you fail this test and are having NEW sx's. This way they can determine if perhaps an MRI is needed to find out if indeed having some new activity.

Now, I can see little point in using this test to DETERMINE if something new is going on if you are having new sympoms that make this CLEAR already (SUDDENLY not being able to walk, etc...).

But it is also used as standard procedure and put in your chart to help them track your disease, just like all the other tests they do upon a routine visit.

I always kid my neuro, he only does these things...the finger to nose and the little hammer on my knee for his amusement. He smiles and says of course he gets bored looking at mris all day

I think a few of you crazyforms & jan53 are mising the big picture by focusing too much on a test. The test is failed because of a lose of the Proprioception sense which can mean an impeding loss of the ability to speak, write, walk, drive. Hand controls don't work because the hands don't function correctly to be able to use hand controls in car.

It is very good to know that I have done this test successfully for the past 4 years. I geuss I am glad they did do it so I know that, this is a change...a consistent change that happened at 2 consecutive appointments seperated by 2 months. It's not like I could never do it, it's like a consistent change.

It's happening while I am starting a new med, because they tell me the old med wasn't working. This says alot about the new med, huh?

It's funny that I would go to an MS support board to find the experience of others who had experienced this. Go figure that I would do that? It musthave affected my cognitive asbilities too! And then some answers say, well at least it is not like losing the ability to walk. Since when on any MS board do we rate losses? Who started that?

Who said that?

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN UNDER THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE NOSE TO FINGER TEST WAS USED CONJUCTIVELY WITH THE OTHER TESTS TO GET AN OVERALL IDEA ON THE PATIENT'S STATUS...LIKE THE HAMMER THING, AND THE NEEDLE THING AND THE PRESSING DOWN ON ARMS, ETC...WAS I WRONG?

I think you are right Kenzy. I would see my neuro every 3 months. I think he used it to judge if I had lost or gained.

I know with the pushing down on legs etc, in the beginning I had no strength, it got much better. So I am assuming during my relapse he could see the loss.