2-4 Week Twitching: Reassuring Signs

[CandyM314]

Came across this old post (hope i'm allowed to do this, not breaking any rules or anything) and thought it sounded reassuring

as a newbie twitcher, i'm a long way off the five month mark but as miguel4life pointed out on a post to me, after even 2-4 weeks of twitching and no weakness, docs move away from a diagnosis of ALS and start looking for other causes (I've just gone past the two week mark - woohoo!! ) )

here's the post:

my neuro is a nerve and muscle disease specialist and sees als daily and would never worry about 1.5 years of twitches and no weakness being als. as a matter of fact he told me 5 months of twitching with no weakness that turned out to be als would be a reportable event for the textbooks on muscle disease.
and he in 20 years has seen 0 people with normal emgs (at the time they where twitching) turn out to have als EVER!! he said to me one emg is always enough when you are testing for muscle disease and twitching is already present because in muscle diseases twitching is last..the end of the disease process.

 

[jsageurge]

Missy – Yes, there is another post here quoting Consultation in Neurology, Caplan/Kelly 1991, saying the same thing. I have seen posts saying that the Cleveland clinic (???) may even question twitching as a sole presenting symptom (e.g. other clinical symptoms may have been missed), but I don't recall where I saw that.

For what it’s worth, you said that your twitching started in your upper back/shoulder area… I have NEVER heard of a “trunk onset” form of the disease, so if I were you, I would consider that reassuring. But don’t panic if you start twitching in other areas, with BFS, that’s been known to happen. I get the back/shoulder blade twitching also.

Cheers,
-Bill

 

[miguel4life]

Thanks for posting this Missy. I had not read it before. As someone who is approaching my fifth month of continuous twitching, I always like to see reports like this one.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Sn0wK1ng]

I have also had some, alright quite a bit of memory loss and I am at that age too) I stiill am not sure if it is age or just having way to much on my mind it is probabley a combo of both. My biggest fear of it all is the rate it seems to be progressing if it keeps up at this rate I won't have any mind left at all.

 

[CandyM314]

Hmmm, I have had a dodgy memory for many years now, can't really blame peri-menopause.

best one ever was when i promised my sister that i would definitely get my nephew from school, to his (very important) athletics meeting on time. I arrived with twenty minutes to spare - unfortunately, forgot to pick up my nephew on the way

 

[spinninghead]

I have definitely wondered many times in the last year if my increasing memory lapses, failure to find the right words, and general periodic disorientation was cause for alarm. However,I've noticed that when I get a really relaxing series of nights of good sleep, all of that clears up considerably if not entirely.

I truly believe that constant muscle twitching, spasms, occasional full-blown cramps can take a toll on more than our bodies. We are just fatigued, sometimes to the point of total exhaustion. And, I also think it takes some energy to keep giving ourselves the little coaching sessions about how we don't have *** and everything is fine even when our muscles are jumping off our bodies! There is a lot of wear and tear going on all of the time.

I think all of the muscle activity is distracting which adds to the whole syndrome of memory lapses, etc. We could probably have a whole portion of this forum dedicated to memory problems.

I'm glad to see there are so many others with the same problems I have, and most of you are MUCH younger than me! There is hope for me yet, and all of us if we stick together.

Tex