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