Hey everyone 32 white female no outstanding medical history besides a recent csection for breech baby. About two weeks ago I was really tired/mildly depressed. I slept for most of 2-3 days straight besides to wake up and feed baby. When I would wake up I noticed some numbness is my hands, which is normal for me. I sleep on my back and am overweight right now (gave birth six months ago and haven't lost any of the weight yet). I tend to sleep with my hands clasped on my chest or stomach and that causes the numbness from lack of circulation. So woke up a few times hands completely dead numb.
After these couple days I started noticing sporadic twitching in both of my legs. Everywhere from my upper thighs to my heel and toes. Never really the same place back to back, not super frequent twitches but consistent twitching. I also noticed hand weakness. For example, I use a bulb syringe to clean snot from my newborns nose and it felt hard to squeeze that as though I was using all my hand strength to just overcome the slight resistance. This was completely new. I do this every morning and had never noticed any even mild weakness before. However it is one of those hindsight issues where I am second guessing if this is just a final point where the weakness became noticeable. It is only in one hand (right hand) and my left one is normally the one that falls asleep from lack of circulation.
It is now two weeks since this onset and I still have this weak feeling in my hand(and the leg twitching). It seems to come and go but always feels off. What I mean is sometimes I feel fine to grip things but when I do it still *feels* weak like that feeling when you wake up in the morning and you just don't have strength right away to grip but I can grip fairly well (not quite as strong as my left hand), and other times I actually cant grip things hardly at all and it *is* weak (like the nerves just cant move the muscle). It also feels as though my right arm may be experiencing some weakness too now.
My symptoms have not gotten worse unless there is some a weakness which I can't tell for sure, but they also haven't gotten any better.
My questions are: does this sound like it is possibly initial ALS onset? Would I notice a change in weakness if it was progressing in such a short time? Did anyone experience anything similar with limb weakness onset? Any examples of what your initial weakness felt like? How long would it take for an EMG to show ALS if I had true weakness? Have seen quite a few stories of people having symptoms and EMG came back not showing ALS because it was too early then they were later diagnosed.
I appreciate any insight.
After these couple days I started noticing sporadic twitching in both of my legs. Everywhere from my upper thighs to my heel and toes. Never really the same place back to back, not super frequent twitches but consistent twitching. I also noticed hand weakness. For example, I use a bulb syringe to clean snot from my newborns nose and it felt hard to squeeze that as though I was using all my hand strength to just overcome the slight resistance. This was completely new. I do this every morning and had never noticed any even mild weakness before. However it is one of those hindsight issues where I am second guessing if this is just a final point where the weakness became noticeable. It is only in one hand (right hand) and my left one is normally the one that falls asleep from lack of circulation.
It is now two weeks since this onset and I still have this weak feeling in my hand(and the leg twitching). It seems to come and go but always feels off. What I mean is sometimes I feel fine to grip things but when I do it still *feels* weak like that feeling when you wake up in the morning and you just don't have strength right away to grip but I can grip fairly well (not quite as strong as my left hand), and other times I actually cant grip things hardly at all and it *is* weak (like the nerves just cant move the muscle). It also feels as though my right arm may be experiencing some weakness too now.
My symptoms have not gotten worse unless there is some a weakness which I can't tell for sure, but they also haven't gotten any better.
My questions are: does this sound like it is possibly initial ALS onset? Would I notice a change in weakness if it was progressing in such a short time? Did anyone experience anything similar with limb weakness onset? Any examples of what your initial weakness felt like? How long would it take for an EMG to show ALS if I had true weakness? Have seen quite a few stories of people having symptoms and EMG came back not showing ALS because it was too early then they were later diagnosed.
I appreciate any insight.
