a quick ?

Hi everyone
I've posted a couple of times and got some good answers/advice from some very patient people. I've read so many replies to posts that say "this sounds nothing like ALS". Does anyone mind telling what originally sent them to dr? I'm sure many will say weakness. How do u gauge that?
Thanks again and to all my fellow yanks.... Happy Fourth!

A lot of people have never seen a doctor. They search their symptoms on the internet and come to the false conclusion they must have ALS. Other people have some twitching and come to the same conclusion but twitching is not used to diagnose ALS.

You ask about weakness, if you have it you will know, you wouldn't have to ask. For me it started with what I thought were dexterity issues, I was having problems doing things like buttoning my shirt. My fingers would not work properly because they were weak.

Not being able to do even one push up, not being to open a bottle of anything, not being able to grip a pen.

For my husband it was extreme fatigue and he couldn't get his words out, saying uh a lot. He was teaching math at a local comm college and couldn't put on the board what was in his head. This was due to bulbar onset ALS. No fasciculations were discovered until after we had seen two neurologists.

Judy, just to be clear, mental confusion is not a symptom of ALS, bulbar or otherwise. Bulbar onset ALS does not affect a person's ability to think of the right words to say, it affects their ability to say them by taking away the ability to move the tongue and lips.

Sorry, Barry, it's late and has been an extremely busy day taking care of my husband. I'm still waiting on time to pass to give him his last feeding. I forgot to include he also has FTD. He wasn't confused, and he knew what he wanted to say or put on the board, just couldn't do it. Thanks, and take care...

Thanks Judy, I just wanted to make sure that our worried twitchers don't get the wrong idea.

Take care and have a good night, I just finished my last box of formula of the day so it sounds like we are on the same feeding schedule.

Barry

Hi, for my husband he had a bit of a dry cough that wouldn't go away. I finally booked him into see a respiratory specialist. My husband mentioned to the dr that his arms had also been feeling weak and so one of the various tests the specialist organised was an EMG. The result of this EMG set the alarm bells ringing. In retrospect he had also been having very strong leg cramps for months before, he said it felt like someone was trying to pull the muscle away from the bone. We hadn't linked this symptom to anything at the time but it was probably an early sign of als.

I have PLS, so it is slow and progressive. I landed in a doctor's office when the leg weakness overstrained and damaged my back and destroyed my hips. I had experienced other signs before that, like foot drop and leg spasticity, I didn't know they were important, though! I feel really blessed that the web wasn't full of medical information back then and that I didn't start to progress in an age where I could google things like "spastic gait".

Mom started noticing weakness in her fingers on her left hand, and let it go for about a month. The previous year she had carpal tunnel surgery on her right hand and the doctor had told her at that point she would eventually need surgery on the left hand also... she just thought it was time to have the other hand done. Needless to say, after extensive blood work, MRI's, EMG's and all other testing she was diagnosed a month later...7/17/09