BigSpookies
New member
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2022
- Messages
- 4
- Reason
- Learn about ALS
- Diagnosis
- 00/0000
- Country
- CA
- State
- QC
- City
- Montreal
Hi everyone,
I don't want to waste anyone's time and I swear I've taken the steps to be as sane as possible before posting here because I really don't want to just be annoying, but I think I've come as far into this madness as I could without help. I'll try to keep it short as my story can be somewhat summarized into 2 parts, the fear, and the actual maybe-symptoms.
Part 1, The fear: about 2 months ago my eye started twitching, I didn't look it up, I didn't think about it more than that, I figured I was fine because my eye sometimes twitched when I was stressed, except this time it didn't go away. Continued to ignore it until about 3 weeks ago when my fingers started twitching (I wasn't getting much sleep at all for weeks at this point because of work) and then I started getting worried. It started in my pinky and worked it's way to my index over a day or two. That's when I googled it, and this is why this part is called "the fear." I've read the sticky and I've been to the bottom of this and back, and I see how many people have lost their minds with terror about this horrible conditions, because 90% of sources contradict each other, and anecdotal "evidence" of random, weird starts are all over the place. Safe to say I absolutely lost my.mind and had a full nervous breakdown for the last 2 1/2 weeks. I started having fasciculations all over my body and I also started having what I felt like left arm weakness and I had a sharp pain in my right calf. I was stuck in a vicious cycle of fear. About 3 days ago I got a grip, realized I was destroying my mind and I started reading better sources (like this board and the stickies) and got to a hold of myself, which made the fasciculations drop DRASTICALLY. This leads me to...
Part 2, The symptoms: I relaxed, I got 9 hours if sleep every day for the last 4 days, and now I have some things left over I hope to rule out here.
My remaining and current symptoms are:
- Fasciculations that only occur a lot in my left eyelid, the ones in my body have reduced to extremely few (8 to 20 total twitches a day spread out through my left lip, thumbs, left fingers, jawline, forearms, left calf and right foot.)
- I had a sharp cramp in my left calf from my outer ankle to the back of my knee 2 days ago and my leg still feels kinda tender there.
- Perceived? Real? Weakness in my left arm. This is the only one that actually still scares me. I feel like I have ants between my knuckles and down my fingers except for my index and thumb, and the outer muscle down the edge of my forearm has felt off and super tired for the last 36 hours or so.
I have a follow up with a neurologist on the 28th, but I'm just trying to regain enough sanity to try and return to semi-normalcy, at least until then. I've seen how kind and patient this board is, and I promise I won't argue with anything you say, I just want to know if it's possible for a forearm muscle to be the first to go, how that would impact thing, and if it would just make things feel a lot harder, or if ALS would shut some functions down day 1?
Thank you for your time and patience,
Another Terrified Fool
OH! Also a little background on myself, I don't work out much at all, so I know the arm isn't related to overworking it.
I don't want to waste anyone's time and I swear I've taken the steps to be as sane as possible before posting here because I really don't want to just be annoying, but I think I've come as far into this madness as I could without help. I'll try to keep it short as my story can be somewhat summarized into 2 parts, the fear, and the actual maybe-symptoms.
Part 1, The fear: about 2 months ago my eye started twitching, I didn't look it up, I didn't think about it more than that, I figured I was fine because my eye sometimes twitched when I was stressed, except this time it didn't go away. Continued to ignore it until about 3 weeks ago when my fingers started twitching (I wasn't getting much sleep at all for weeks at this point because of work) and then I started getting worried. It started in my pinky and worked it's way to my index over a day or two. That's when I googled it, and this is why this part is called "the fear." I've read the sticky and I've been to the bottom of this and back, and I see how many people have lost their minds with terror about this horrible conditions, because 90% of sources contradict each other, and anecdotal "evidence" of random, weird starts are all over the place. Safe to say I absolutely lost my.mind and had a full nervous breakdown for the last 2 1/2 weeks. I started having fasciculations all over my body and I also started having what I felt like left arm weakness and I had a sharp pain in my right calf. I was stuck in a vicious cycle of fear. About 3 days ago I got a grip, realized I was destroying my mind and I started reading better sources (like this board and the stickies) and got to a hold of myself, which made the fasciculations drop DRASTICALLY. This leads me to...
Part 2, The symptoms: I relaxed, I got 9 hours if sleep every day for the last 4 days, and now I have some things left over I hope to rule out here.
My remaining and current symptoms are:
- Fasciculations that only occur a lot in my left eyelid, the ones in my body have reduced to extremely few (8 to 20 total twitches a day spread out through my left lip, thumbs, left fingers, jawline, forearms, left calf and right foot.)
- I had a sharp cramp in my left calf from my outer ankle to the back of my knee 2 days ago and my leg still feels kinda tender there.
- Perceived? Real? Weakness in my left arm. This is the only one that actually still scares me. I feel like I have ants between my knuckles and down my fingers except for my index and thumb, and the outer muscle down the edge of my forearm has felt off and super tired for the last 36 hours or so.
I have a follow up with a neurologist on the 28th, but I'm just trying to regain enough sanity to try and return to semi-normalcy, at least until then. I've seen how kind and patient this board is, and I promise I won't argue with anything you say, I just want to know if it's possible for a forearm muscle to be the first to go, how that would impact thing, and if it would just make things feel a lot harder, or if ALS would shut some functions down day 1?
Thank you for your time and patience,
Another Terrified Fool
OH! Also a little background on myself, I don't work out much at all, so I know the arm isn't related to overworking it.