Weakness, muscles looking weird

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moneaster

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Hi,

I'm experiencing changes in my muscles and strength and am trying to understand what's happening to me. I apologize in advance for my English which is not my first language.

A couple of months ago I noticed weakness i my legs. My legs are shaking a little every time I walk down stairs.

During two weeks I had very weird tensions in my face muscles. It felt exhausting to use the facial muscles and very tiresome to speak, like I had to push the words out, and I struggled at work which requires me use my voice a lot. I asked my doctor for a referral to a speech therapist to get some exercises to relax these muscles, thinking it's due to stress. The voice strain then went away but I kept my appointment in hope the speech therapist could give me some exercises if it came back. But the speech therapist wanted me to be examined further and she wrote a referral to a speech therapist in one of our bigger hospitals. She noticed weakness in my voice, not being able to scream load, and my voice was apparently "leaking". (I was instructed to scream the loudest I could over and over again and also perform different voice tests). She also referred me to spirometry. This was a little shocking.

My ankles feels unstable, as well as my legs overall, taking a walk is not very pleasant anymore. I do not recognize my thighs when I lift up one leg, the muscles attached to the pelvic/pubic bone(?) seems to be gone, there is just a fat lump hanging next to my thigh muscle. I can't feel any muscles around the pelvic/pubic(?) bone at all, it's only skin with glands and bone underneath. My hipbones is suddenly very visible. When I tighten my thigh muscles I notice what looks like loss of muscles at the inner side of my right thigh. My calf muscles looks very asymmetrical, I asked a physiotherapist friend about it, she said it is very apparent that I lost muscle mass in my right calf. Sometimes I have great tension i the calf muscles. My muscles are strangely looking and uneven at front of my lower(?) legs, and more now than a few weeks ago when comparing with a photo I took when I started notice my body changing. I've always been pretty fit and always had very strong legs before, loving uphill running etc.
My right hand and underarm is very thin, I can easily put my left hand fingers (have got very small hands) around it almost halfway to my elbow, which I never could before. The under arm is now completely flat with a "hole" right before the hand starts. All bones are very visible. The muscles a little bit further up look uneven/weird. When showing others they agree with me. My left arm muscles looks even and normal. My hips and knees are also extremely "bony" now compared to before, it is suddenly uncomfortable to cross my legs. When I look at bikini pictures from one year ago my body looks so different now, like I aged 10 years in one year.

I've also lost weight the last months, around 10-15 percent of my normal weight. My weight is now just at underweight according to BMI and during my entire adult life I never weighed so little. I have normal appetite and the scariest part is that my fat depots looks and feels similar to before which means my weight loss is pretty inexplicable.

My body is generally weaker, I can't use the same weights in the gym anymore. I struggle a little bit with using my right arm, writing is somewhat difficult. I often have vague pain in my right arm and shoulders as well as in one knee and my ankles. I also have fasciculations in most parts of my body since a few months.

With all this said, I still can perform all normal movements. I realize my symtoms doesn't sound like ALS which always starts in one body part, right? And because of me still being able to function normally, although with some struggle.
Maybe I shouldn't write here at all according to this and in that case I'm very sorry. But if someone recognize these symtoms and have any ideas I would be so very grateful for input.

My GP assessed my reflexes as normal one month ago. All my blood tests are normal as well, which should rule out inflammatory disease. I'm doing an MRI (brain) next week and will also perform an EMG in a couple of weeks.

Thank you for reading my story.
 
you are not describing ALS for a number of reasons. For one your symptoms are all over without complete failure of any one area As you note this is not how ALS presents.
we can’t tell you what is wrong. You doctor will, after doing tests. I hope it is fixable.
good luck to you but this won’t be the place to find answers
 
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