Seeking advice.

Hi, y'all! I apologize in advance for the book. I am just desperate for advice.

TLDR: How do I continue advocating for myself and going through testing to determine if I have MS without feeling like I am being viewed as a hypochondriac? Full context in post below:

Backstory:

I had what I (now) feel was my first episode of parasthesia in 2006 which sent me to the ER for the first time. I was experiencing tingling and pins for no apparent reason in my left arm down to my fingers. I have also been experiencing musculoskeletal pain off and on since 2010. It started with a weird pressure and minor pain on the lower left side of my rib cage, near the lower area where my stomach is. I have also experienced intermittent rib pain on the left side next to my sternum, and at all points around to my back on the left side. I have gone to the ER multiple times over the years fearful of it being a heart attack, and it never is. My doctor even ran a battery of tests including a stress echo, and nothing remarkable comes of the tests every time (I now believe that this was the start of the MS Hug, dysesthesia symptom).

For a while, my doctor thought it was anxiety, and it did seem to come and go based on stress levels. I was put on Effexor, which almost immediately ended the pain. However, the side effects (including brain shivers) made tolerating the drug impossible, so I was weaned off it.

In 2017, I began experiencing a new abdominal pain in my lower left quadrant of my belly. That pain has come and gone over the years since. Sometimes it will be in complete remission. Sometimes it will just pop up ever so lightly, and other times it is immobilizing. I had a colonoscopy in 2018 which found nothing remarkable, or that led to any kind of diagnosis.

More recently, I had an episode on the 13th of July where I had this weird pressure across my face at the nose and eye level that felt like heat radiating from it. When I woke the next morning it was accompanied by a light pressure across my chest and tingling in both arms. I went to the ER and they ran a battery of blood tests and did a CAT scan of my brain. Blood tests were all essentially unremarkable and the CAT scan only cerebral atrophy that was slightly more advanced than it should have been for my age (I will be 45 in October). As I was being discharged from the ER I also developed a headache that seems to have turned into a migraine that lasted 30 hours or so (first time I have had a headache of that magnitude, so I am assuming it was a migraine). Since this episode, I have been having daily transient headaches. Sometimes lasting moments, sometimes lasting for up to an hour, and never in the same location. They are occurring all over my head and scalp. I have also been having widespread and intermittent musculoskeletal pain as well, with more frequent parasthesia, especially when I do any kind of exercise outside. And add to that weird muscle tension which creates pain on movement. As well as one week after the ER visit, I was tilting my head to eat a taco for dinner and I had a very painful and sudden electric jolt shoot from my neck (on the side that I was bending towards) up my scalp behind my ear, and towards my temple. Needless to say, this current spate of symptoms I am experiencing is beyond anything I have ever experienced. Especially the headaches. I have never had a headache last more than a couple hours, let along 30, and then daily episodes at least a few times per day, for weeks afterwards with no sign of slowing down.

At the follow up My doctor seemed dumbfounded, but mentioned MS in passing. She ordered an additional battery of blood work that showed absolutely nothing, again. So, I have an MRI scheduled in September to check for lesions to rule out MS, or what I am really suspecting, begin the process of an MS diagnosis.

My ask for advice is, how do I go through this process, advocating for myself, without making myself continue to seem and feel like a hypochondriac with my doctor and also my family. Because that is exactly how I feel. Always chasing answers, and never getting them while more and more symptoms pile up and force "course corrections" in the chase.

My wife has been in the picture since the pain began in 2010, and its been almost a decade and a half of chasing a non-diagnosis for what could be a case of relapsing/remittent MS, after my entire medical history is taken into account. For the record, I do not want an MS diagnosis, nor am I seeking one. But, at least if that is what it is I can begin really managing it instead of hiding at home for weeks on end, laying under a heat pack and self-medicating the pain away.