No need for EMG: Neurology Check-up

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NightDesign

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After three months of twitching in my calves, arms, and eyelids, and worrying myself to death about MS, ALS, and you name it, I finally visited a neurologist. He checked my reflexes, strength, coordination, and sensory perception. All were perfectly normal. He checked out the fasciculations. He essentially said fasciculations in the absence of reflex or strength abnormalities didn't warrant an EMG. He took a blood test for CPK just to check that out. If the CPK was abnormal, he'd recommend an EMG. But, he said they were most likely benign. He postulated that my recent weight loss could have precipitated it. I've lost 50+ pounds of the last 7 months and he hypothesized that maybe something in my metabolism might be off-kilter, as there are a large number of factors that go into muscle and nerve function in humans.He also added that fasciculations are so common that people with medical knowledge, "almost always give themselves the test for ALS, especially medical students." The doctor had also dislocated his shoulder recently and told me his triceps have been fasciculating like crazy over the past few days. Hah! I feel a bit relieved, but still, my overactive mind is tugging me down the road of serious neurological diseases. I guess that's part of the beast.If nothing else, the receptionist was a hottie.
 
Sounds like good news. Of course, anxiety can put a damper on good news, so try to keep it at bay. Glad you had the added bonus of a hot receptionist :LOL:
 
Hi, just returned from the neurologist. The second neurologist since I started feeling these strange twitches about 6 months ago. My doctor doesn't feel that there is any reason to be alarmed by my twitching since she didn't see any twitching when she examined me. Everything is fine, she wants to check me in a year. Why do I feel so frightened? This morning during a seminar, I was standing talking to some friends when my leg and gluts started twitching. Mentally, I just get knocked off balance. This happens a lot. My doctors say that this isn't normal, on the other hand, nothing is wrong. Can this be stress? I work too much, smoke and drink an awful lot of coffee. On the way to my neurologist I thought that if something is really wrong I'll never do another thing that doesn't matter to me...seconds later I thought why am I doing anything that doesn't matter to me? Am I going to be okay? Are these twitches abnormal? Are mine any different than what others on this board are experiencing. Mario do you have some advice? I read your replies and feel that you have perspective.
 
Hey CathiI have been there. My neurologist said "Is it stopping you doing anything?" If the answer is no, then it is nothing serious.Relax.....
 
Here's my advice.The problem with a lot of BFS sufferers (myself included) is that they go into it assuming the worst, and have to convinced that it is nothing serious. For whatever reason, from this board, or from google searches, they are convinced that they are the case where twitching precedes weakness, and that they are doomed. And of course once you reach that point mentally it is all over for you. You're going to be a mental basket case for a while.Yet if you step back and look at the bigger picture (from doctor advice, old timer BFS advice, even from the board archives) you will see that the worst case scenario is NEVER the case. It NEVER happens. No one has ever progressed to anything sinister on the history of this board. Ever. Not even close. BFS can be a pain (or a twitch) in the a$$, but that's all that it is. As Angusglover said above, "Does it actually prevent you from doing anything you would have been doing anyway?" Of course not.So rather than jumping to the worst case scenario and trying to mentally recover backwards from there, why not just skip that step and actually listen to the doctors and the people who have had this for a while? Just accept that you DON'T have anything serious. You just have hyperexcited nerves, which was likely either caused by A) a virus, B) anxiety, or C) some weird autoimmune condition. None of those are going to progress to anything beyond what they already are, so why lose any more sleep over it?I'll tell you what. I've heard so many "It turned out I was okay" and "I should have listened to my doctors" stories that by this point I'm pretty much convined that the idea that "twitches could turn out to be ALS" is just a ridiculous urban legend. I think that's people reading out of context facts over the years and repeating them in a panic, and it just gets passed along and bastardized over and over like a nasty game of telephone. I have not heard of one single documented case where ALS ever started with just twitches. There have been doctor reports in here over and over where actual doctors and neuros have said the same thing. And these are people who actually DO see ALS, and who understand it is nothing like what anyone here has. Over and over, that is what they say. "You're just twitching? Big deal. Join the club!"So here's my advice. Read the descriptions of BFS wherever you can (including BFS in a Nutshell), and take special note of the part that always says, "There is no treatment, but the most effective way seems to be to treat the accompanying anxiety." You will notice that almost 100% of the people who have gotten better have done it this way. Either they learned to relax, they took anti anxiety drugs, they started meditating, or they just learned to deal with it. No that doesn't mean that anxiety necessarily caused it. But if you freak out about meaningless twitches on a minute by minute basis, yes you have now officially given yourself an anxiety disorder.Hope that helps.P.S. I've been on SSRIs (Lexapro) for seven and a half weeks, and the intermittent weakness in my left leg is completely gone. Now I just twitch. Twitching, shmitching. Who cares?
 
I was really interested in the comments of the two people who have posted on this thread, saying that they still feel worried about ALS even after their neurology appointments. I had the all clear from my neurologist in December (and I can relate to the comment about medical professionals jumping to the worst case scenario because I am a doctor myself and was already planning what music would be played at my funeral by the time I went to my appointment!). It is now the end of April and I am only just beginning to really come to terms with the benign nature of my condition. I can't explain why I was still worried despite the advice from a specialist and I can't explain why I even now have moments when I think I do have ALS after all. But I can certainly relate to the experiences of others in this regard.Being a doctor, I often tell patients "Do as I say, not as I do!" (not that I smoke, eat badly or drink too much myself) and I think this is good advice here.CheersSimon
 
Ugh, wouldn't you know it. The same day I visit the neurologist, I start seeing a different kind of twitching. I've just noticed it a couple times tonight. The best way I can describe it is a "machine-gun" twitch. It's like 20 twitches at the same location in my calf--like a "rapid fire" series of twitches. Is this something you've experienced and is it common with us BFS'ers?Man, this is torture sometimes. :mad:
 
It's been a week now and my calves and everything else imaginable are still fasciculating, but I'm really doing a lot better. There was never a phone call back from the office, so I guess the CPK blood test was normal. It was very beneficial to my sanity to hear a trained neurologist say the words "benign fasciculations." I haven't been sitting around stewing over MS or ALS or any other disease. I hope the twitching goes away one day, but the twitching is nothing compared to the crippling fear and anxiety I'd been experiencing. Hopefully things will continue to get better from here.
 
Yes the crippling anxiety is horrible, but as many have said before getting out of the house and subsequently one's own mind really helps. I know everybody on this board, myself included, has days, weeks and sometimes months of being paralized by fear. But what are we afraid of. I don't know how many people were afraid of the dark when they were children, but I was. I was so afraid of ghosts and floating vampires that every night before falling asleep the space behind the headboard, under the bed and the closet were thoroughly checked before my overactive imagination would allow me to lie in the dark and stare at the door wondering if that really was a ghost waving its filmy hand through the crack that wasn't there before. THE TWITCHING, FATIGUE, CRAWLING UNDER THE SKIN FEELING WE EXPERIENCE IS REAL, but it's not always easy to detect. Okay, I went to a neurologist two weeks ago and felt, like many of the people on this board do, as if she didn't take me seriously, in spite of the fact that she had given me a full neurological examination with explanations and even took a couple a strength tests I wasn't familiar with; I left her office more depressed than before. Two weeks of a black hole like depression have passed since that day...Last weekend I went to a party and there was an elderly woman there who has been complaining of feeling weak, tired. She thought she had a problem with her hip, couldn't open the screw top on a pop bottle any more, had swallowing difficulties and breathing difficulties. She has never been to a neurologist, but she will be going to see one this week. In a supersticious sort of way I knew that this wasn't the time to compare symptoms; but if anxiety could be measured on the richter scale, I could have flattened a city. Is she facing the bogeyman? I think I saw him in her. He wasn't a filmy hand or a bump in the night; this was real; really real. My symptoms are real too, but not like her's. What am I afraid of? If that's what we are afraid of, and for many of us it is, then we have got to get out, take walks, laugh, love and drink life. After seven months of twitching; I am not what I saw in her; not today. Besides, even if I am twitching I am only guarantied this moment; and there is not one moment to loose. Good Lord, this board brings out the preacher in me. Have a nice day.
 

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