Dr. Suess

"And will you succeed? Yes indeed! Yes indeed! Ninety Eight and Three Quarters guarenteed!"


Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Needle Torture & I was right after all!!!

I just got back from being poked like crazy from the neurologist. Yikes. First thing it showed is that I have Myasthenia Gravis (no kidding? I think my neurologist was a bit frustrated by that, hoping that even though I still have quite a few symptoms every day, that it wouldn't be detectible on an EMG, and it was rather prominent ... normal response would be they electricute the nerve and the muscles contract at 320, second time would react at 275 to 360, with MG it's going to be 250 or below. Mine was 80, and all the muscles were showing that big of a second reaction, sooooo ...) but on the nerves, which is what he was checking, it showed exactly what I thought was wrong to begin with and was the reason I hadn't bothered to complain to any of my doctors! It's lupus. There is inflamation in the nerves and it's causing the numbness. No permanent damage, if the inflamation goes away, the feeling should come back. It's mild/moderate and the worst that can happen is some mild discomfort (no pain) and some minor coordination problem ... well, that's IT ... that's all that's happened. It's mildly annoying, and it's making signing difficult, but I don't know that there is a VISIBLE change in my signing, it just FEELS different, I have to work at signing instead of it flowing naturally. He says it SHOULDN'T worse, but it could. But he said that when I said "See the EMG was a waste of time and needle pokes" he said that "no, we need this as a baseline on the very small chance it worsens"

So, all the needle pokes did was tell me that I have myasthenia gravis and lupus in my central nervous system ... which, is 2 things I already knew!
At anyrate, it is GOOD news that the nerves are NOT damaged, that it's NOT peripheral neuropathy from the metabolic disorder and that it probably will just be an annoyance and CAN go away if the lupus gets better.

Now if I can just get my over all sed rate down ..maybe that will help the inflammation in the nerves to decrease.

Thanks for the prayers.
Pk

2 comments:

  1. Hey PK
    I hope that since you didn't mention how painful the test was... that that's a good sign?

    Praise God for a good report!
    Blessings-

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  2. oh no! It hurt! The neuro made me tell him it wasn't that bad when he was done, but he was still holding a needle when he said it. (we have a very odd doctor/patient relationship after almost 13 years LOL)

    I also forgot to remind him I'm allergic to latex and am broken out tonight. ARGH!

    But, at least the results were nothing out of the ordinary and only what I'd thought they were to begin with. Next hurdle is to find out if I have the lupus blood clotting factor and if my left knee needs surgery or not. Blood test taken yesterday, I have no idea how long till it comes back, and then I see the ortho about my knee next Wednesday.

    Then the endocrinologist on the 7th, the hopefully my life will return back to it's normal version of chaos.

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