ALS health anxiety

[Sharmen]

Hello,

I'm after a little advice. I'm a 33 year old male, and have been a health anxiety sufferer for probably around the last 17 years. I normally manage to move past it, but I've been really feeling it for the past month or so with the ALS thing and I can't seem to push past it.

It all started with a twitching muscle on my right quad which caused me to consult Dr google which is a terrible idea I know. It didn't last longer than an hour but then I noticed my right quad was twitching. The twitching here has been pretty constant for the last month and is pretty much non stop every 5 seconds and still happening now.

I've also had a problem swallowing which had been there for the last 18 months or so. It's nearly only ever with saliva or liquids never good. It feels basically like I've forgotten how to swallow, but then it comes back. Knowing this was also a symptom has me really on edge.

I've also been muddling my words a lot, and have increased clumsiness , I walk into things a lot over the past month, and I also feel like I drag my right foot sometimes when walking or running.

I've also had throbbing muscles and been feeling a bit weak. I know this is all probably anxiety related, just looking for a bit of reassurance.

Thanks

[Blue23Blent]

Are you seeking reassurance?

[Sharmen]

Are you seeking reassurance?

Sorry, not sure what you mean?

Yep, I'm after some reassurance.

[nomorepanic]

Have you read the sticky thread about ALS?

[Fishmanpa]

Have you read the sticky thread about ALS?

Well worth the READ. (https://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=196071)

Positive thoughts

[Sharmen]

I have read that and it does help, thanks.

I guess the problem is I start seeing atrophy like dimples in one of my calves when it was probably there to begin with.

I guess just hearing from other people who have been through it/ are going through it really helps me out

[TylerB]

It’s amazing what your body creates when you’re worried. You start paying attention to things like swallowing and speaking and walking. This makes those things so much more difficult to do. I’m reminded of an excerpt from a story about how if we are mindless about certain tasks, the easier they are; likewise, the more mind we pay them, the more difficult they are:


Excerpt from von Kleist’s “On Marionette Theatre”

My friend looked into a tall mirror just as he was lifting his foot to a stool to dry it, and he was reminded of the statue. He smiled and told me of his discovery. As a matter of fact, I'd noticed it too, at the same moment, but... I don't know if it was to test the quality of his apparent grace or to provide a salutary counter to his vanity... I laughed and said he must be imagining things. He blushed. He lifted his foot a second time, to show me, but the effort was a failure, as anybody could have foreseen. He tried it again a third time, a fourth time, he must have lifted his foot ten times, but it was in vain. He was quite unable to reproduce the same movement. What am I saying? The movements he made were so comical that I was hard put to it not to laugh.

From that day, from that very moment, an extraordinary change came over this boy. He began to spend whole days before the mirror. His attractions slipped away from him, one after the other. An invisible and incomprehensible power seemed to settle like a steel net over the free play of his gestures. A year later nothing remained of the lovely grace which had given pleasure to all who looked at him. I can tell you of a man, still alive, who was a witness to this strange and unfortunate event. He can confirm it, word for word, just as I've described it."

"In this connection", said my friend warmly, "I must tell you another story. You'll easily see how it fits in here. When I was on my way to Russia, I spent some time on the estate of a Baltic nobleman whose sons had a passion for fencing. The elder, in particular, who had just come down from the university, thought he was a bit of an expert. One morning, when I was in his room, he offered me a rapier. I accepted his challenge but, as it turned out, I had the better of him. It made him angry, and this increased his confusion. Nearly every thrust I made found its mark. At last his rapier flew into the corner of the room. As he picked it up he said, half in anger and half in jest, that he had met his master but that there is a master for everyone and everything - and now he proposed to lead me to mine. The brothers laughed loudly at this and shouted: "Come on, down to the shed!" They took me by the hand and led me outside to make the acquaintance of a bear which their father was rearing on the farm.

"I was astounded to see the bear standing upright on his hind legs, his back against the post to which he was chained, his right paw raised ready for battle. He looked me straight in the eye. This was his fighting posture. I wasn't sure if I was dreaming, seeing such an opponent. They urged me to attack. "See if you can hit him!" they shouted. As I had now recovered somewhat from my astonishment I fell on him with my rapier. The bear made a slight movement with his paw and parried my thrust. I feinted, to deceive him. The bear did not move. I attacked again, this time with all the skill I could muster. I know I would certainly have thrust my way through to a human breast, but the bear made a slight movement with his paw and parried my thrust. By now I was almost in the same state as the elder brother had been: the bear's utter seriousness robbed me of my composure. Thrusts and feints followed thick and fast, the sweat poured off me, but in vain. It wasn't merely that he parried my thrusts like the finest fencer in the world; when I feinted to deceive him he made no move at all. No human fencer could equal his perception in this respect. He stood upright, his paw raised ready for battle, his eye fixed on mine as if he could read my soul there, and when my thrusts were not meant seriously he did not move. Do you believe this story?"

"Absolutely", I said with joyful approval. "I'd believe it from a stranger, it's so probable. Why shouldn't I believe it from you?"

"Now, my excellent friend," said my companion, "you are in possession of all you need to follow my argument. We see that in the organic world, as thought grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and decisively. But just as a section drawn through two lines suddenly reappears on the other side after passing through infinity, or as the image in a concave mirror turns up again right in front of us after dwindling into the distance, so grace itself returns when knowledge has as it were gone through an infinity. Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god."

"Does that mean", I said in some bewilderment, "that we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?"

"Of course", he said, "but that's the final chapter in the history of the world."