Magnesium Deficiency re-visited

So- I have been thinking about my tremors and twitches and weakness, etc. especially since my tremors and twitches had gone away. I had failed to mention that during the time they went away, I had increased my intake of Magnesium. A few days ago, my magnesium supplement ran out. This morning I noticed a return of the twitches, and I felt wrong inside. Now I see that it may be that the magnesium was helping. Here is a bit from the web.

Magnesium deficiency from Wikipedia See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypomagnesemia Miss-spellings are from Wikipedia.
Clinical features

“Deficiency of magnesium causes weakness, muscle cramps, cardiac arrhythmia, increased irritability of the nervous system with tremors, athetosis, jerking, nystagmus and an extensorplantar reflex. In addition, there may be confusion, disorientation, hallucinations, depression, epileptic fits, hypertension, tachycardia and tetany.”

From that list, I have my share of nystigmus, weakness, tremors, jerking- which I am taking to mean twitches, but who knows for sure? Depression also fits if sleep is disrupted as in my case- I had thought the twitches disrupted my sleep, but maybe it is just a coincidence that I did not sleep well last night, and noticed a return of the twitches. This page it also talks about magnesium deficiency blocking release of acetylcholine, which is the neurotransmitter that is also associated with Myasthenia Gravis.

“The neurological effects are:
 reducing electrical excitation
 blocking release of acetylcholine
 blocking N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptors, an excitatory neurotransmitter of the central nervous system.


Well, I went right down to the store and got more Magnesium supplements. I feel calmer already.

And about those tremors- What tremors? ? ? ?

Man, I sound bitter in my last post. .. .

Well,if any of you have gone through having something that is a bit out of the ordinary as far as a diagnosis goes, you can no doubt understand why. I do not want to be that bitter. If I go back to my doctor again, it will be to do only the simple things any doctor has experience with. He is not an ‘out of the box’ type thinker, and that is what is required here. Or, maybe he would be a better doctor if he had more time. Well, I gotta scoot.

Remember I was recently diagnosed with essential tremors? Of course, I had known I had them but no one would ever take the time to ask me to show them what I did that made me notice them. At least my regular doctor was good for that much. The thing is, they seem to be gone.

Essential tremors do not just go away, or do they? I can’t find any site that suggests they go away without any reason anyway, and most just say it is something you have to live with. I know, I see the ads pop up on this site too, and some of them are about essential tremor cure. I do not want to dissuade anyone from clicking on an ad here but also do not want to seem that I endorse any that show here. I have the ads to pop in for key words in my blog- so they are what they are. My tremors went away totally, with no changes to anything I was doing, or not doing.

I woke up a few days ago without the normal felling of twitches and tremors that still had been there in the mornings when the medication was its weakest. I decided to try a day without the medication- and then another, and another. My hands are steady. I am not twitching. I do not get it. Maybe this was not really essential tremor, but something else that just mimics the symptoms? Who knows? I will ask the next doctor I see whenever that happens.

I am done

At least, as far as my personal Doctor goes, I have had it. He has shown before that he is not quite up on NA, and evidently he is not able to get into it enough to deal with a patient who has it. My problems are all due to lack of exercise. . .

But of course it is never as simple as that. My lack of exercise, even though I have exercised consistently all through this time, is the reason I am weak. And my exercising is the reason I am weak. There is no residual weakness from the NA because of course as we all know, everyone recovers from it within a few years, and I am no exception. The EMG tests I just had prove that. I have had a complete recovery. These guys have been doing these tests for a long time, and they know how to read the results. OK then. But, as I pointed out, I had my last EMG test right after the winging started in my scapula, and that guy also concluded that I had no nerve related trouble. What? No answer for that one Dr know-it-all?

And what about the other symptoms I have brought up to you recently that may not be related to NA? They were conveniently forgotten since the Neurologist found no reason for them. So, I guess I made all of that up. And if I made that up, I must have made the rest of it up too, so we will just not talk about that. Oh, and by the way, I have to scoot.

No. Not me, the Doctor. HE had to scoot. My appointment was for 11:30 am. I was in the exam room by 12:20. I had my vitals taken by 12:35. I think he came in at 12:40 or maybe a few minutes later. I was in my car and pulling out of the lot by 1:00. HE had to scoot. Where was my appointment? Oh, I guess I was waiting all through it, and beyond. No wonder he had no time to talk to me.

Sure, he was running behind. I am happy that by cutting my visit so short, I helped get him back on schedule. I do know one thing. The person he had to scoot to wasn’t in the waiting room yet when I got the call to go back to my exam room. It is nice to be taken so seriously by the person you have entrusted your life to.

So, as I said. . . I am done. No one will take me seriously. No one gets NA, or HNA. And I guess aside from the essential tremor that he actually did see, I must only think I have the rest of it. There is no reason for the rest of it though. So, I must be making it up about my eyes and the other weakness being anything to be concerned about. You see, it just does not feel right for me to be this way. Maybe it is just not far enough evolved yet to be on their radar. They did not see the essential tremor when I first felt it. Maybe this is like that, and eventually it will be enough that any idiot doctor can tell something is not right. Or maybe I am lazy.

All I know is that I am done doing this blog for now. I have nothing new to share on anything that is pertinent to anyone with NA. And my complaining about doctors is not productive for you or for me either.

Say hello once in a while. I am still here, just taking a break from writing for a while.

From pushups to tingles. . .

Well, if you are following this in any way, I had worked my pushup count back up to 20 very slowly, sort of taking my neurologist’s suggestion to exercise but do not overdo it. It still kills me that they think I am weak from not trying to exercise. Anyway, I had gotten to 20 about the time I had seen him last time- whey he told me I should be trying to exercise. A day or so later, I tried and could only do 15. I think those who have been here may already know where I am going. A few days later I tried, and could do 8 or so. Today, I could barely do 5. There you have my attempt at exercising slowly to build up my muscle mass. Yep. Right.

So, the tingles of last week are gone too. They only lasted that one day, and however active that was it turned out to be just a fluke in the overall scheme of things. Or at least, if it did mean anything, what it meant has not become clear yet. I have no improvement of movement or strength. And, I have no decrease of movement.

It goes on. If I can get my last couple of months of insurance straightened out by tomorrow, I have another appointment with my regular doctor to discuss the findings of the Neurologist. The end of next month, this insurance goes away, and I will have to figure out a new way to pay.

My right hand. . . Now what?

It has been a while since I have written anything that actually was about NA, the subject of the blog. As it turns out, I have been preoccupied by other matters.

Remember that my right hand had been the site of my original attack of NA? Today, when I woke up, I began to notice that my right thumb and index fingers were tingling a bit. This increased through the day, and has been going on for around eight hours now. It increases when I stretch my arm out away from me. This is from the lower part of my hand, radiating out through all but the little finger. It has now been just under ten years since my first incident with my thumb and index fingers of my right hand. And my hand has been pretty much a quiet and a non issue for at least 5-6 years.

What does this mean? Hey, even though I got lucky with the diagnosis for my shoulder, I have no clue about this. Doctors I have seen pretty much implied that any tingling like this would happen only early on in the injury, and then it would eventually stop. And, they did not seem to be suggesting that the tingling was a good thing. What do I know? Not much. All I know is that the last time I felt this much activity in my hand was right before I became able to move my index finger again. And one more thing; I have routinely stretched my right arm out in the way I am now doing that cases the tingling to increase, and there was nothing. Tomorrow, maybe there will be nothing again. But for now, I know something is going on that has not happened for a long time.

To spill, or not to spill

I had known I had a tremor before but I did not choose to do anything about it until it started to impact me in a way that others would notice. I guess some might have noticed me before this, but I could still believe that they would not be sure they had really seen what I could feel happening. It all started at Starbucks.

“Do you want room for cream in that?”

Of course not; if they leave room for cream, they are cheating you out of coffee you have paid for. Anyway, if you ask for room for cream they always leave too much room for me. I just like a splash of it for flavor. And nine times out of ten, they still leave enough room for cream even when you say not to. That tenth time in this case, is the one that got me.

My barista (it is hard to think of them as baristas when they are filling a paper cup with coffee from Starbucks) filled my cup, and snapped the “to-go” lid on. I took it over to the sugar and cream station and removed the lid. My coffee about spilled over even sitting on the table there, it was so full. I thought to myself, ‘I will just pick this up real quick and drink it down a gulp or two so I can put some half-and-half in.’ And there would have been a time in my past that this would have been the thing to do. But, now was not that time.

I had raised the cup up halfway and it was already about out of my control. I stared at my hand willing it to be still, knowing it would not, but still unable to continue raising it, or lowering it back to the table. The shake got worse. It is funny that I should have known this would happen with a paper cup. It always does to some extent. If it had been a porcelain mug, the extra weight would have made it a steadier task. But these paper cups are just the right weight to set up a tremor, and I knew that. Why didn’t I think to steady my right hand with the left? It is a strange thing that putting two shaky hands together for me anyway, still works to steady things down a bit. But, how would that look? In some ways, using my left hand as a stabilizer would have been admitting that I had a problem. Yes, it would be much better to just stand there with cup half way to my mouth. By then, it was too late to do anything anyway. The coffee was splattering over my hand by then.
My first thought was that this stuff was way too hot to have tried to sip down to a more manageable level anyway. It was better to burn my hand a bit than to have to nurse a burned tongue for a few days. And it had the same effect as having drunk the coffee to a manageable level in the cup.

Now the worry was how many people witnessed my accidental spill? Where did Starbucks put the napkins again? It always seems like they hide them. OK, just sop up the spill, and move on. Of course I am shaking even more now with the added stress. People are around me waiting for me to move out of their way. No one wants to rush the poor old shaking man who just spilled coffee on his hand.

I have tried to be better about these types of events since then. Of course, now I am on Propranolol so that limits my shake to a degree. And, I am trying to be less caring about what others may see when they look at me. Maybe they understand. Maybe they do not. Maybe they have something they are sensitive about also, and they are not even looking at me lest I notice what they are attempting to hide. Maybe next time they ask me if they should leave room for cream, I will just say, “yes- leave a bit of room.”

I am cured. . . not

That is right. I saw my new Neurologist yesterday and today I am healthy. It is funny; I do not feel particularly different. I think that is because he chose to ignore certain things I said and focus on his machines that all predictably functioned flawlessly and told him that I had no neuromuscular problems. Everything is just fine here. No reason to ever come back to see this one. I am done.

So, what happened about the lower than normal CK blood test results? It all depends on who defines what is normal I guess. The lab that actually did the test flagged the results as lower than normal. My doctor did not even say that result was there. If I had not gone in and gotten my own copy of the results, I would never have known it existed. He would have been content to not even discuss that. But, according to him, he was only interested in that count if it was elevated. That is why he glossed over it.

What about my weakness you ask? Well, so did I. He suggested my weakness is only in my arms and it is due to my NA only. What about the crash in muscle function? It is of course because being out of shape as I am, I over did my recovery and potentially blew out the axons connected to the nerves that had regenerated to carry on new muscle return in my arms.

Well, that may fit for the arms. But it says nothing about weakness in my lower abdomen or legs. Well, if I am weak there, it is because I am out of shape, he suggests. There is no neuromuscular issue in my legs or feet. But, he did not test in my upper thigh which is the area I pointed out feels odd. And he did not test in my stomach area which is where I pointed out felt weak. When I told him I had done 10 sit ups and could not do even one ten minutes later, he suggested that I had used my weak arms to aid in the sit ups, and that was why I had trouble doing them.

Why do doctors always know you better than you know yourself?