LilTiger92
Member
The test started with the tech doing the nerve conduction. It hurt but wasn't awful until she did the peroneal nerve. That one hurt like a mother. She looked at me and said is that where you are feeling the issue and I said yes and she said...yeah..low amplitude. Well that did it. I started panicking. When the tech finished and the dr came to do the EMG I was so wound up I was crying. She was very sweet and I flat out told her this has been the month from hell and that I was scared out of my mind because of "the nasty". I told her I googled and she laughed and said "ahhhh of course!". She then said she only went to medical school for four years and did another four just for neurology so she wasn't sure if she knew as much as google. I truly appreciated her humor. It helps when the doctors aren't so full of themselves! So she proceeded to stick me in my left arm and leg which wasn't so terrible except for the tiny muscles and for my calf because it was already sore going in. Sore muscle plus needle stuck in plus forced contraction equals unbelievable pain! At any rate she didn't say too much other than lots of "goods" and "mm-hmmms". When she finished she said quite definitively "It's not ALS". She then went on to say this and I will stress it for every one of us that is worrying and worrying and reading and interpreting all the different stuff we read: "When someone comes in with ALS they have weakness. Weakness you can see and they can feel. Not just twitching. They don't even KNOW they are twitching. We have to tell them. This is not ALS." This doctor is the head of one of the larger groups in my area that treats TONS of patients each year with a whole gamut of issues. She is a neuromuscular doc who specializes in NMD. I have to believe her. If only for my own sanity. Now that's not to say something else may or may not be going on but she was emphatic on what it wasn't. There is decreased amplitude in the one nerve. But her notes that I was trying to peek at said no atrophy so I'm hoping what I have is an pinched nerve and that's causing my odd sensations. As for the twitching? She said she sees it a lot and it's generally benign. One of my glute muscles started twitching after she pulled the needle out and she looked and said "yeah..it's usually benign". She was unimpressed. So now I am waiting on the full report and trying to focus on the positive because for today....I don't have the dreaded disease. What happens in 6 months, a year, 10 years I don't know. But today...I'm okay. I'm still nervous waiting on the full report but I at least have one cleared off the list for the time being.
reading your post was very reassuring..thanks for posting xx