Re: Ongoing symptoms
Als is an incredibly common fear among hypochondriacs, you're not alone. But it's not a vague disease. I can understand how hypos can worry about ms, certain types of cancer, etc but it blows my mind that people fixate on als because in general, it's an obvious disease. And trust me, I've struggled with the fear as well.
I'll let you know right off the bat that a neuro can smell that disease from a mile away most of the time. If it's not blantantly obvious when they first meet their patient, then it becomes obvious during the neurological exam. If something comes up abnormal, then and only then do they follow up with an MRI/emg/etc.
As unfortunate as it is, the emg will not give you relief. You'll doubt the results just like you doubt the doctor, and you'll continue to google and read horror stories and try to convince yourself you won't die from als but the reassurance you're seeking will only make you feel worse and worse.
It's as simple as this: failure not feeling. Many of us who have gone through this particular fear have sunk so far into the rabbit hole that the only saving grace was a cocktail of medication to cool our nervous systems down and slow our brains so we can rationalize again.
Until you have buried this fear in the ground for good, you will continue to relate any and all benign symptoms (twitching, cramping, soreness, pain, stiffness, joints cracking, shortness of breath, tripping up on your words, perceived weakness, fatigue, etc) to the "inevitable" disease that you do not have.
---------- Post added at 17:49 ---------- Previous post was at 17:46 ----------
Originally Posted by
Katy_o
Another way of potentially looking at this is that ALS is incurable regardless of what stage you are diagnosed at. Meaning that if you have this (which you don't, and have had tests from experts to confirm this) there would be nothing you could do. This disease is not like many cancers, where the sooner it's diagnosed the better the chances are of it being cured. What I'm getting at is, why are you so desperate for a diagnosis of this disease when there would be nothing you could do for it? What difference would having this diagnosis make? It's not as though you would get any treatment as such, other than palliative care. Live your life for today (and today you do not have ALS).
This is the conclusion all hypochondriacs eventually have to come to, especially those fearing terminal diseases. Brilliant post.
__________________
What makes earth feel like hell is the expectation that it should feel like heaven.