New Member - Fearful Twitching

[BarboFour]

Hi, I am glad to be a new member of this site and I am hoping that you all can help me in realizing that what is going on is benign and not what I am afraid of. First of all I had a experience with this before it was about 2 years and the twitching subsided greatly and all was well with me.Its been about 3 years since then and its back with a vengence. It started in my left shoulder blade and has spread everywhere. when it started this time Ididnt realize at first that it was the twitching and I was having pain in the shoulder blade and in my chest so I went to the doc and found out i had a ulcer and a hiatal hernia an ulcer and gerd.Thought it was over but then started feeling the twitches everywhere. It is something I thought I wouldnt have to deal with again. Its different this time in ways that are scaring me. Its been 8 months so far and about 4 of those months my tongue has been twitching alot last time it might of twitched twice in two years. I am also having trouble swallowing that seems to be worsening. i first noticed a few months ago i got a piece of food stuck in the back of my throat and it scared me a little but it went down and i forgot about it.Since then its been having to swallow a few times to get the food to go down and now I feel like almost everything I eat is sticking and taking forever to go all the way down so I drink alot of water when i eat. I also have a lot of mucus and throat gurgling noises. I have had trouble with slurring my words but it seems to have subsided. I of course am terrified this is something horrible. I do get pin pricks here and there but not as many as last time. I shake and jerk also. I just keep trying to tell myself that this has happened before and it is benign but the swallowing is scaring the crap out of me. That is new to me and I think it is weakness. I had a emg the first time and all was normal but I cant right now because I have been unemployed for about 3 months. No insurance no money. I have heard there can be swallowing issues with gerd and hernias but it is getting worse and of course fear it is the worst case scenerio. Anyone?????? Help

 

[simonw00]

Hi thereI am new to the site too. I see that you had not received any replies to yur post and, even though you posted it some time ago, I thought I'd reply. The recurrence of your BFS symptoms must certainly have given you a fright, particularly when you developed more tongue fasciculations than you had previously experienced. Not that I have gone to a lot of trouble to check, but this is about the only part of my body that has not been affected by BFS although the reading I haev done tells me that tongue fasciculations are a feature of BFS so the fact that you have them now does not increase the risk that there is something more sinister behind your symptoms as far as I can tell from what you say in your post. I had throat symptoms and slurred speech early on in my BFS days (about 4 months ago) and was absolutely sure that this meant I had ALS. It turned out that I had become so incredibly anxious that I had provoked these symptoms. I guess that, if you also have digestive problems such as reflux etc, then your throat will be more prone to symptoms from this, because the stomach acid can regurgitae up the gullet to cause damage to the throat. In conjunction with anxiety, I bet that throat symptoms could get quite bad.I am 4 months into BFS now and I have only recently felt reassured that this was benign because time has been on my side. If I had ALS I am sure I would have developed progressive symptoms in this time frame. From the rading I have done, throat and speech involvement in ALS tends to progress reasonably quickly and, if 4-8 months have elapsed this time, then I think this is reassuring. The fact that your symptoms (especially the speech) have subsided suggests a fluctuating pattern of symptoms which contrasts favourably with the non-fluctuating progressive nature of more sinister diagnoses. Also, if you had a normal EMG first time round during a period of time when you had symptoms then this is highly reassuring. I don't think the likelihood of having ALS in someone in this situation is any greater than teh general population, i.e. very rare. Meanwhile, the chance of you having a recurrence of your BFS is much much higher. So on paper at least, the odds are stacked very heavily in your favour.I hope that by now things have settled down and that the info above is irrelevant.Good luck and regards from New ZealandSimon

 

[BarboFour]

Thankyou for your post. I can use all the common sence and positive thinking I can get. I am still having swallowing issues and of course the twitching and I worry still. You are right though it seems like it should be benign and mabey the gastro/ anxiety is the problem. I really hope this is the case. Thanks again for your post.