New Here - Twitching for 2 Months

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iddleKraigSavage

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Hi everyone, I am new here. First off I wanted to thank everyone on this site for their posts as they have really helped me get through a very difficult time. I have been twitching for about two months now. After reading all of your posts I somehow feel compelled to also tell my story. I hope it doesn’t run too long.It started as in many others in both of my calves. I noticed it getting dressed one morning and tried to blow it off. It did not go away and in fact got a lot worse. Soon, both of my calves had multiple, multiple spots of twitches (probably hundreds) one right after another all over the calf. They are constant 24/7. It literally looks like a bag of worms under my skin- involving the whole calf. I am 38 and a pretty healthy, active guy. I am a physician (pulmonary and critical care) but this by no means protects me from the anxiety associated with this. I have seen patients with **s and images of them immediately came to mind. I was convinced I had it. I could not detect weakness on my self testing so I wrongly figured it must be early **s. I have been totally freaked out for the last 2 months, convinced I was dying.After two weeks of this, my wife (also a physician) convinced me to call a neurologist that I work with. He saw me immediately and did a full exam. There was no weakness, but he did find some asymmetry in my hands (the muscle between thumb and forefinger). He thought it was nothing and said he did not think I have **s. He felt these were benign fasciculations. He mentioned BFS as a possible diagnosis. Every other physician I have spoken to had never heard of it (myself included). He didn’t think I needed an EMG.Despite this, over the next several weeks I was waiting for the weakness to set in. The physician half of my brain has been trying to reassure myself, especially as I could not find any weakness, but the other half of my brain has been winning. I wish the neurologist never pointed out the hand asymmetry, as since then I have spent hours upon hours studying my hands and any other asymmetrical dent in my body. I have found more than a few, and each one caused me to lose a night or two of sleep. I continuously watched and waited for fasciculations to appear in my hands, particularly on the left where I had the questionable atrophy. Sure enough, I had a couple of twitches in the exact spot which totally freaked me out. They since stopped, and there is still no detectable weakness.As time has gone on, my wife has gotten pretty fed up with me. She thinks I am obsessed and crazy, and she is probably right. When I would come home from work, my 13 month old would be running around, trying to play with me, and she would catch me just staring at my hands and looking very down. I think she has seen enough. After about 6 weeks of this, I started feeling better that time was passing and I wasn’t getting weak. But just when I was beginning to convince myself I was going to be OK, the twitching started spreading. It went up to my left thigh. It is now continuously there in a several spots, and the calf twitching went into overdrive. Again I freaked out!! I could only think of my impending doom, and not being able to see my kids grow up. And this anxiety I have come to realize only makes the twitching worse. I continue to test myself multiple times a day, and it has become the bane of my existence. My hands often ache after all the testing. I can’t get up from a chair without thinking about my leg strength. I get up using only one leg, then sit back down and get up with only the other leg. I have never been the worrying type and haven’t been to a doctor in over ten years (doctors make the worst patients). But now I am obsessed with my own health. I still sometimes think, how great this would be if it was from cancer and a paraneoplastic syndrome. Pretty sick, I know. I also have random “pops” all over my body. Often just once or twice in a spot and then it will go somewhere else. I even get a little twitching on my face just below my left lower lip. It feels a bit like a buzzing, and you have to look really close to see it in the mirror. I don’t think anyone would notice. Maybe this was triggered by a virus, I am not sure. As I look back, I had a flu about a month before I noticed the twitching. I was also going through a pretty stressful time with my Dad in the hospital and trying to sell my apartment before we have our second child coming in a few months. Who knows? I also am debating how aggressive I should be to look for a Thymoma causing the twitching as a paraneoplastic syndrome. It is probably not what is going on, but somehow I still long for an explanation for all of this. Finding this website helped me out dramatically. Seeing that there are others with the exact same symptoms, really helped me reassure myself. This is especially true knowing that this has not progressed to something else over the years for all of you. I am only two months in, and think I will feel a lot more reassured as more time passes. I look forward to getting my life back, and feel I have missed too much time already.Keith
 
Keith,I'm glad you've found this site - we are all here because listening to each other's experiences provides us with perhaps more relief than we get from doctors. Of course this is screwed up in a way, but a lot of us are struggling with health anxiety (and I suspect a lof ot those are well informed people, who simply "know too much"). Me: I have recurring and sometimes out of control health anxiety since I lost my mom to spinal cord cancer at age 13.You'll probably get a lot of responses related to the twitches - yes it spreads and goes around and most people twitch everywhere, yes, stress makes it worse, and especially obsessing about fatal diseases will trigger and execarbate it. Well, I'm one of the worst offenders, so I should know. One thing grabbed my attention as I have a somewhat similar experience. When the twitches started I feared *** and started focusing on certain signs, such as weakness, that I foolishly googled on the net. To reassure myself, I started lifting weights for all muscle groups. Soon enough, I had dents here and there with some prominent tendons. For example, I squeezed a V shaped wrist exercisor, which I've never done before. Now the tendons feel rubbery, they are extremely tight, and they created dents between them. When I'm in a good mood, I think that the dents are from shortened, contracted muscle and tight tendons. When I'm low, I am convinced that the dents are atrophy and I feel desperate. Yesterday I've seen a GP who is not my regular and who would not form an opinion whether there is atrophy in the hands or not. The symmetry is striking, and it all happened in a matter of a few weeks. However the strength test was fine and so what we discussed that if someone had already lost muscle, surely there would be a sign of weakness. My measurable clinical sign was loss of sensation in both hands. Doc suspects pressure on the radial nerve and peripheral neuropathy due to cervical spine issues (there is significant nubmness in hands).Lastly, I wanted to share that my hubby is also pretty much fed up with this whole issue. We interrupted a much awaited vacation/family visit to Europe (walked away from two Opera perfomances) just to get home and see a doctor. We had a good conversation yesterday: I told him how scared I was and he told me he never knows whether my symptoms are real or just hysteria. We had a good discussion about how we feel - God knows I need his support now more than ever, in return he expects me to put it together and focus ahead one step at the time. Talk to your wife and tell her how you live through this ordeal. She will understand and hopefully you will be able to focus more on your family than on your symptoms. Your're right, time is the essence. You will find that you're OK as time goes by and will be able to put your worries behind you. Take care, Kat
 
Thanks Kat.I agree that if there is no weakness now, its not true atrophy in your hands. I also totally understand that no matter how many times people tell you that, you will still look at your hands and obscess over them. Somehow, this is the cycle we need to break. I do the same thing.This fear and anxiety changes us, and puts a strain on our relationships. My wife and I have had a few heart to hearts lately, and she is being pretty supportive. But she definitely still thinks i am a bit nuts. She just wants the old me back.I think in more time that will come.
 
Here's one thing I have learned about BFS, gleamed from months and months of reading through the entire archives on this board.Do you want to know what the most frequent outcome of BFS is? What happens to the most people in the end?"I got ALS and died"? Nope, it has never happened even once."It turned out to be a life threatening disease, like MS"? Nope, again, not even once."Turns out I had an undetected cancer"? Nope, again has never happened.If you go through the entire 7+ year archives of this board, you will find that the most popular outcome when it comes to BFS is "My significant other got sick of me and dumped me."So just remember that before you walk too far down the woe-is-me self-indulgent phase of early BFS obsession. Spouses and boyfriends and girlfriends are only human too. You can only push them and neglect them so far before they get sick of it. And do you know what? They aren't the ones who are at fault in that scenario. You can only kick a dog so many times before it stops coming back to you.It's perfectly fine to be scared and anxious during your early BFS symptoms, but be very very careful about how much of this you dump onto your significant other or family. It's fine to be scared, it's not fine to make life all about you and all about your anxiety. You don't want to become just another statistic in the "BFS ruined my relationship" category. There have been too many of them, and it is all too avoidable.I would suggest visiting a place called and learning how to control some of your thought processes. That 's what I did around my second month of BFS, and it helped me immeasurably. Because as I often say to people who still have BFS panic, "If a doctor has looked at you and cleared you of anything major, then the problem is YOU. You are the one who will continue to perpetuate this."
 
Hi Keith and welcome to the board. We love having physicians on the board to bombard with all our crazy medical questions. Hope that doesn't scare you away! I know what you mean about physicians being the worst patients. I am not a physician, but a therapist. Makes me resistant to therapeutic techniques, but not the least bit immune to anxiety. Unfair! In fact, the anxiety I experienced at the beginning of BFS was more than in my entire life combined. I couldn't eat, sleep, or concentrate. My life revolved around checking reflexes, staring at my tongue, and checking my body for atrophy. Even now, I sometimes spend a bit too much time staring at my hands. I'm always embarrassed wehn my husband catches me. He knows what I'm doing and can't see the logic in it. (Maybe because there is none!) I've gotten better over time. It's been 8 months now and I am nowhere near as obsessed. The twitches do cause me moments of anxiety, but no full-blown panic attacks like in the beginning.My symptoms began with the feeling that my hands and feet were falling asleep all the time. Then I developed an eye twitch, then my whole body exploded with twitches and pain. Looking back now, it really sounds viral. Every part of my body was twitching at once (including scalp, tongue, and some unmentionable parts!) Pain migrated from tendons, to joints, to muscles. It was crazy and lasted for weeks. Since then I have had all of the usual tests with the usual "normal" results. I have lost no strength. The pain has mostly disappeared, but the twitches continue. As time goes on, coping becomes easier. It will for you as well.Keep us posted on your progress and Dr. visits. Also, post your concerns and anxiety here. There are a lot of people that can relate and help.Becky
 
Thanks Becky and thanks Mario. I appreciate the advice. I am committed to not less this take over my life anymore.Becky, you can of course ask me physician questions but I dont promise to know the answers. I definitely have more questions about BFS than answers. But I guess we all do.I am very grateful for this website. Sharing all this madness we go through is very therapeutic.P.S. Very Funny. My wife catches me looking at my hands all the time as well. She too knows exactly what I am doing. She just gives me this look. I think I can break this habbit. Keith
 
Hi Keith!So glad you found this site. It really helps to know that you are not the only one with this condition, nor are you going through this alone...It's so easy to let this take over your life, and your thoughts... trust me I know. My husband said if you don't stop googling, I will disconnect the computer. So I stopped for the most part. It's enough to drive you crazy!!!! I think many of us are testing our strength making sure we still have it....I too recently started twitching, different places, different times... I feel it most on the bottom of my foot. I also have electrical vibration feelings in certain parts of my body... very weird feeling. This all started for me after coming off prednisone 6 weeks ago for sciatica problems. First it was numbness and burning and now more twitching and electrical feelings....When I feel really anxious now, I TRY to tell myself that "it's probably nothing serious" rather than " I know its a--" I does help a little, but I WANT THE SYMPTOMS TO GO AWAY!!Hang in there, and know that pretty much all of us relate to what you are going through...Andrea
 
Welcome aboard. Your story is like everyone elses. I have been twitching everywhere for 6 months now. I have been through it all from thinking I had ALS, MS, Brain Tumor, Cancer, etc... My anxiety got so bad that I would be in tears everyday and could barely make it through work. I became obsessed with the twitching where I could not focus on anything else despite being cleared by a neurologist and having a normal EMG and bloodwork. I recently went back on anxiety medication and it has helped so much. I no longer obsess about this. Yes, I do wonder what caused it but I probably will never know. My husband is the same way, he can't stand hearing about it anymore and just tells me to believe the doctors. We all know what you are going though here cause we have all been through it. Hang in there, you will be fine.~Leslie~
 
Keith - Like me, I am also eight weeks into this adventure. Your story sounds so similar to my own. I think your experience first hand with patients who have **s has no doubt increased your anxiety about your own symptoms. I know all too well how our mind's can affect our condition. I also know many physicians and how much stress is involved with your profession. I do believe you have bfs. I am at a good place right now even only eight weeks in. Like you, without weakness, I don't believe we can have the dreaded disease. My twitches started in my calf just like yours and within four days had spread body wide. I consider it now just an annoyance. I am scheduled for an EMG in a couple of weeks and if that returns normal, and I know it will, I will leave this in the dust. My symptoms have already gotten better since having found this site. I'm certain you will be fine.. No doubt. Chin Up!!!
 

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