My ALS fears

[nivekc251]

No you wouldnt be able to flex a muscle that was atrophied due to ALS. Weakness doesn't come and go in ALS u know this lol. Everyone is a bit weaker in the morning. Because you go 7 + hours if your lucky lol without using them. It's like going for long car drives and finally getting out of your car. Your legs feel weak. Calm down you are ok try and relax and stop looking for atrophy because u will convince yourself u have it .

[atl]

You're right, I go a little bit nuts looking for uneven muscles on my right side. As my wife says, no one is perfectly symmetrical. Thank you for your response.

[nj]

I'm currently trying to keep myself from falling into the ALS rabbit hole again thanks to a persistent twitch in my foot. I feel your mental pain, hang in there.

[gillebro]

Hi again,

In the hopes of providing some solidarity, I came across an example sentence in my foreign language study that mentioned ALS (and talked about it inaccurately, I might add), which has caused the all-too-familiar panic and the playing out of scenarios in my head and all of that crap. It's awful stuff, but these thoughts are not facts.

Uneven muscles are normal, because we all have a dominant side.

[atl]

The ALS one is a tough one to break, I am finding. Because "checking" your body is so hard to stop before it happens. It helps a bit to know there are others out there experiencing something similar. Thank you.

[atl]

Tonight I noticed again that the extensor digitorum brevis muscle in my right foot, the side that I've been having trouble with, is about half the size of the one on my left foot. And it's really freaking me out right now. I have a doctors appointment next week.

[Becazican]

Nothing is symmetrical on the human body. Stop examining your body let the dr do that, that’s what you pay he / she for. And they have all that education. Like you i’m Down the rabbit hole with this ,its easier to see someone else hurting their lives by obsessing than yourself.

[atl]

Yeah it's true. Well at least we aren't alone down here in the rabbit hole!

---------- Post added at 09:45 ---------- Previous post was at 09:13 ----------

Sometimes it just feels so much like I have early stage ALS. I'd like to list my symptoms here:

- Feeling of loss of coordination/dexterity in my right hand, along with some pain in the palm, top of hand, and wrist. My right pinky sometimes locks up at the middle knuckle. When I grab things it just feels awkward, and sometimes it takes me a couple tries. My typing with this hand feels off.

- Feeling of weakness in right leg, like it doesn't have enough strength. Sometimes it feels "hollow"/tired.

- I have tons and tons, sometimes constant, muscle twitching in my legs, especially my right calf and foot. Secondarily in my left leg, and rarely in my upper body. Sometimes my right foot will just jerk for no reason.

- The extensor digitorum brevis muscle in my right foot is significantly smaller than the one in my left foot.

- When I put my right thumb in a particular position, I can't get it to bend at the second knuckle. It just won't go. If I modify that position, I can get it to bend.

So far, I've been able to pass all the strength tests. Thank you for reading.

[CleverLittleViper]

The symptoms that you describe sound nothing like ALS.

Clinical weakness, as it pertains to ALS, is a failure of something. Not a feeling of weakness/tiredness. It's actually not being physically capable of doing something. For example, one morning, you were able to lift the kettle to fill it up at the tap. The next, you cannot do that no matter how hard you try, and you can never do it again.

Simply feeling weakness in one part of your body, but still being able to carry out every day tasks does not remotely signify ALS.

It sounds to me like you're focusing far too much on this. Ask yourself one thing-would a person without anxiety be putting this much thought into things? Would they, for example, examine areas of their body for differences? Probably not. Your aim is to get to that point.

No one's body is 100% symmetrical. Some people have one leg longer than the other. One foot slightly bigger or broader. Even our faces have elements of asymmetry. This is normal. And not remotely a signifier of something being terribly amiss.

At your next doctor's appointment, discuss your anxiety over your fears of ALS. That should be the focus because no one can live life like this. Believe it or not, anxiety can cause a lot of what you describe. It can cause feelings of weakness/tiredness, make you super aware of your body and how every motion feels so that they feel awkward or "off," cause twitches and makes you hyper-aware of things you didn't even think about before but were there the whole time.

ALS is incredibly rare. It's so rare it's not even worth worrying about. And the reality is, you're not qualified to even suggest that anything you're experiencing is ALS because only trained professionals, through extensive testing, are qualified to do that. Take heart that you pass your strength tests and that is the biggest indicator ever that you do not need to worry about ALS.

Take care.

[mihu]

I hear you, having the same issue here for 2 months. Altough doctors and people reassured me that I'm ok so far, knowing that this is a tricky disease but I still want to trust the doctors and stop worrying myself.