SantorumSantorum2012
New member
Hello everyone.
I just want to start off by thanking everyone who has already been involved with this site. After finding your site this morning, this is the first time in a month that I am feeling some relief. It's been a great help to read about everyone's symptoms and experiences.
I am 45 years old and in good health. At the start of this past December, I developed a strong nerve twitch in my left forearm. It would twitch several times a minute, but I didn't give it much thought, because I figured it was just stress. It lasted for two weeks and then went away for about two weeks over the holidays. About a week into January, it started up again.
After about three or four weeks I started experiencing some new, more frightening symptoms. I was experiencing twitches all over my body. Not all at once (and not consistently), but sporadically. I would have them in my other arm, my thighs, calves, chest, eyes and back (I had one moment when both lat muscles started fluttering). More unnerving was a new vibrating sensation in my arms and occasionally in the back of my neck, and occasionally in my lips. There was no noticable shaking in my arms. They were rock steady to look at, but I could feel what felt like a low level electrical current running through them. Some nights I would go to bed feeling pretty good (with no twitches) and wake up around 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning with my arms buzzing (and/or twitching in my left forearm).
At this point I went to see my doctor. A number of different blood run-ups were done and they were basically normal. My blood sugar level was slightly elevated and one of my creatine levels was slightly up. In the words of the doctor, "as if my muscles were cramping, like if had been on a strenuous run right before taking the blood tests." He felt it was probably stress related, but gave me a referral to see a neurologist, just to be safe and to rule out the nasty possibilities. He was very good at trying not to scare me, but the symptoms (as we all know) are good enough at doing that on their own. My appointment with the neurologist is in three days, but in the meantime I've talked to tons of people and been all over the internet trying to "educate" myself about what was happening to me. After weeks of looking at information about Parkinson's, MS, brain tumors, imune systems attacking muscles, muscular dystrophy and ALS, needless to say, my symptoms were getting worse with worry. As many of you would have expected, my symptoms did not match up in any classic sort of way with any of the diseases until I stumbled across this site (thanks to a doctor's post on a Cleveland Clinic's website mentioning BFS).
I still need to see the neurologist in a few days to rule a lot of things out (I've never been so anxious to get to a doctor's appointment), but feel much more optomistic. I don't have any muscle weakness or atrophy, no loss of coordination and the symptoms (although generally present) come and go. I do have a day a week where I am fairly symptom-free.
Anyway, thanks very much for listening. I would love to get some feedback from you. And thanks again for just being here. It's great to find other people who have had similar experiences.
Wish me luck on Thursday-
Mark
I just want to start off by thanking everyone who has already been involved with this site. After finding your site this morning, this is the first time in a month that I am feeling some relief. It's been a great help to read about everyone's symptoms and experiences.
I am 45 years old and in good health. At the start of this past December, I developed a strong nerve twitch in my left forearm. It would twitch several times a minute, but I didn't give it much thought, because I figured it was just stress. It lasted for two weeks and then went away for about two weeks over the holidays. About a week into January, it started up again.
After about three or four weeks I started experiencing some new, more frightening symptoms. I was experiencing twitches all over my body. Not all at once (and not consistently), but sporadically. I would have them in my other arm, my thighs, calves, chest, eyes and back (I had one moment when both lat muscles started fluttering). More unnerving was a new vibrating sensation in my arms and occasionally in the back of my neck, and occasionally in my lips. There was no noticable shaking in my arms. They were rock steady to look at, but I could feel what felt like a low level electrical current running through them. Some nights I would go to bed feeling pretty good (with no twitches) and wake up around 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning with my arms buzzing (and/or twitching in my left forearm).
At this point I went to see my doctor. A number of different blood run-ups were done and they were basically normal. My blood sugar level was slightly elevated and one of my creatine levels was slightly up. In the words of the doctor, "as if my muscles were cramping, like if had been on a strenuous run right before taking the blood tests." He felt it was probably stress related, but gave me a referral to see a neurologist, just to be safe and to rule out the nasty possibilities. He was very good at trying not to scare me, but the symptoms (as we all know) are good enough at doing that on their own. My appointment with the neurologist is in three days, but in the meantime I've talked to tons of people and been all over the internet trying to "educate" myself about what was happening to me. After weeks of looking at information about Parkinson's, MS, brain tumors, imune systems attacking muscles, muscular dystrophy and ALS, needless to say, my symptoms were getting worse with worry. As many of you would have expected, my symptoms did not match up in any classic sort of way with any of the diseases until I stumbled across this site (thanks to a doctor's post on a Cleveland Clinic's website mentioning BFS).
I still need to see the neurologist in a few days to rule a lot of things out (I've never been so anxious to get to a doctor's appointment), but feel much more optomistic. I don't have any muscle weakness or atrophy, no loss of coordination and the symptoms (although generally present) come and go. I do have a day a week where I am fairly symptom-free.
Anyway, thanks very much for listening. I would love to get some feedback from you. And thanks again for just being here. It's great to find other people who have had similar experiences.
Wish me luck on Thursday-
Mark