murcie355

Mike, I have been. That's the frustrating part. They don't see a need to do any further testing. They tell me it's anxiety.

Royce, you must really see a doctor about these things.

Royce, you're right that I've been exposed to a lot of people's personal stories about ALS. That's why I'm really sure you don't have it and you shouldn't worry about it. Ask your primary care GP doctor to look into it. GP's are trained and experienced at leading health investigations, and can refer you to whatever specialists she thinks are needed.

You need to ask yourself why, after an experienced neurologist has cleared you of ALS after a thorough exam, you still want to come onto an ALS website and ask a total stranger's opinion.

Hi, Royce. Sorry to see you're back. If you don't have confidence in your doctor's examination and testing, and you are specifically concerned about ALS, you should bump up to an MND specialist. Take written questions and ask them all, and write down the answers.

Royce, first think of an individual muscle. It goes from OK to totally limp pretty quickly, sometimes overnight. But of course, we have many muscles in the hand, so you might compensate for that one muscle and just button your shirt differently or hold your coffee cup differently. But then the next muscle goes, and the next, so your hand is pretty quickly becoming useless. So, in that way, the disease overall is progressive. But from the view of an individual muscle, once ALS attacks its nerve, it goes limp pretty much overnight.

Overall, you don't present like ALS. I think you've got something much more common. Maybe even simple like a pinched nerve.

Your symptoms are relatively common, so you should investigate a common disease. If I thought for a moment that you might have ALS, my reply would be much different. Try to put this out of your mind, or you'll go crazy. Let us know what it turns out to be. --Mike

Hello, my name is Royce. I'm a 44 years old. My muscles as of late have been constantly fatigued feeling and sore with no physical exercise to justify it. I have been experiencing the muscle twitching all throughout my body for the last week, mainly legs, feet, right arm, and thumb. My main concern is the weakness I have in my right arm and more specifically my thumb. I can still grab things with my hand and use my thumb, but it gets very sore and fatigued easily. My fingers feel heavy and opening and closing my hand seems more difficult then the left hand. I get twitching in my thumb and right arm when exerting both. I have had periodic tingling in my right hand which I have read is not indicative of als. Along with the twitching all over.The thumb has been making it increasingly more difficult. For some reason my right hand and thumb have had considerably more problems than the left. Could this be the very early signs of als?