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dadcantbench

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Learn about ALS
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US
State
MI
City
Detroit
Hi all, I'm a 25 year old male from Detroit and my dad is 53 years old. This post is about my dad.

Background info:

my dad has plenty of other health problems that make weightlifting harder for him, including arthritis in his knees, a bone spur in his back which causes a lot of pain and some immobility, and he had a neck surgery when he was ~35 that ended up giving him some nerve damage in his chest.

What i know is:

He has been complaining about weakness for a while. He told me that before his neck surgery, he would bench press 245 for reps, and after his surgery he couldn't do any weightlifting for a while, but due to the nerve damage he was never able to bench press more than ~185 for reps (usually sets of 8 I believe)

Quoting him "ive gotten weaker quite precipitously in the last two years" and says that 2~ years ago, he was still able to rep out 185, but now he's only able to do 155ish for reps. He said he could only probably eek out ~3 with 185 these days. He got an EMG from his neurologist just to see if his nerve damage got worse or anything, and his neuro basically just said. Yeah, you have damage. Pretty consistent with something that would result from that surgery.

He has been working out less in the last couple years because of the knee and bone spur problems, and hes thinking maybe he just has low T which may be adding to the problem (he has 3 older brothers, 2 of which have been supplementing their testosterone for a while)

I don't want to bring this up to him because I don't want HIM to be thinking about ALS, and I know I'm the one thats really prone to health anxiety.

Also nobody in our family has ever had ALS

my questions:

1) If it was ALS, would the neuro noticed anything being inconsistent with the nerve damage he's had for years?

2) Would it likely start in the chest/would it be billateral? He says his triceps are fine, just his chest. And both sides are equally (relatively) weak (dumbbell pressing shows he has the same strength on both sides)

3) Would it be unusual for 2 years of progression to result in the amount of weakness noted by him?

Thanks everyone for reading, and I hope you're all able to make the most of your 2019s
 
Yes, the EMG would have shown anything beyond the expected results.

The chest would be an unusual onset site and onset is typically not equal in both sides.

With two years of progressive ALS, he would not be lifting 155 lb. reps.

Get help for your own health anxiety.

Best,
Laurie
 
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