25M. I've read the sticky more time than I can count (have the original version from alsforums bookmarked). The problem is that I keep reading about cases that don't play by those rules i.e. people who start with twitching, people whose weakness starts more gradually and is mostly feeling at first, and people who had clean clinicals and EMGs before turning out to have it. I also keep reading stories of young people in their 20s getting *** even though it's supposed to be super rare in our age group.
My anxiety revolves around upper motor neuron onset/dominant ***. I won't describe what I did because I don't anyone else to start checking themselves, but I went down the internet rabbit hole, looked up a bunch of neurological tests, and convinced myself I was positive for some of them. It's been 14 months since the fear started but I keep reading that UMN disease progresses VERY slowly and that LMN disease may not appear for years. To this day, I still have zero weakness or other motor deficits and can do everything I've always done, no problem. It's just the UMN signs I think I have. I also went through a phase of worrying about twitching but that's died down some since then.
Now, my mom is not only a doctor but a neurologist so I've badgered her with my worries. She is not at all convinced there is anything wrong with my nervous system. She also did an EMG on me back in December of 2021, which she swore up and down was completely normal, though I read that UMN disease doesn't show on EMG. But in typical HA fashion, when neuro-mom contradicts what I read on the online, I believe my internet research over her medical training and experience. This is in large part due to my reading posts online about general neurologists missing *** and about atypical presentations of ***.
I've now sworn off reading anything medical on the internet except for HA forums but even on places like here, many users manage to convince me from their descriptions of their symptoms that they have the real thing and not HA. Everyone makes their symptoms sound so convincing and so in line with the condition they're worried about. I find myself looking through people's histories to make sure they didn't have ***. Users who are lost to followup always scare me and make me think they are either dead or too sick to make an update online. Seeing anyone in a wheelchair is also super triggering for me. I always wonder "is it ***?" even though I know there any variety of reasons why someone might be in a wheelchair.