Severe muscle spasm/cramping

[MoChridhe]

Ok here goes, and please forgive me for any "der" moments, I am new to forum posting.
This question concerns my husband who has been suffering from gradual worsening of muscle cramps over the last 5 years. He is a very hard person to get to the doctor an I am searching high and low for answers or possible questions to ask the doc next time we go.
He has severe muscle cramping/contractures throughout his whole body, when hands and feet are involved, digits contort into various positions such as the pinky trying to come and touch the wrist, or what he calls the "Mork from Ork" where the middle and ring fingers suddenly spread apart, the heel of the hand (meaty part on the outside) will actually dimple in with cramping. In the feet the toes will try to meet the heel or he will get cramping in the heel itself. It seems as if each episode involves different digits or areas.
As far as the rest of the body, he gets the spasms all over and in different areas at each onset, along the two columns next to the spine, shoulders, rib cage and even inner torso muscles buttocks and rectum.
When the legs are involved they lock up, jerk and spasm. If he is standing, resting or tryig to walk. Sometimes when he tries to walk the tremors get worse and he has to wait for them to dissapate before he can move. He can be sitting in a chair and one leg foot and all will start bouncing on the floor like he is stomping and sometimes if he tries to stop it the leg will actually "fight" him to continue spasming.
This happens when resting and when exercising, cold makes it worse, but he experiences it in warm temps as well.
When he is in bed it will wake him and me up, he literally bounces on the bed, his entire body acting like it has been electrocuted.
All muscle spasms are uncontrolable and to try to control them causes worse pain. He is often weak after these episodes as if he pushed a car up a hill for two miles.
He has been seen by a neurologist and they found severe narrowing of the spine in his neck due to what they said was arthritis buildup and genetically narrow spine to begin with. He actually has a dent in the nerve in the C5-6, C6-7 area. He had cervical fusion , diskectomy with a cadaver donor bone and metal plate in those disks this past January (2010). THAT part is healing OK, but we believe the symptoms are getting worse instead of better regardless.
He has taken muscle relaxants (flexaril and baclofen) and pain medicines (percocet and hydrocodone) to no avail in almost every episode.
Episodes will last from a few minutes to an hour and affect various areas and severity, from some barely noticible to very painful. He has had full blood workups and there is no red flags in them as far as deficiencies in iorn and potassium, at least not to where the docs said to take suppliments. He has had cervical and lumbar MRI and Xrays, there is one disk in the lower back that is dessicating but the doctor felt that the cervical area was what was causing him to have the symptoms and took him for immediate surgery ( from what the doc said, the nerve was so pinched that a fall, even minor could have left him paralized)

Any help her would be HUGELY appreciated, even some things I should toss in the docs court to look at would be greatly appreciated. I DID do several exhaustive searches on the symptoms and almost every search can be narrowed down to just a handful but nevertheless scary possibilities that share the charachteristics of his symptoms such as MS, Parkinsons (altho the docs scoffed at this suggestion) Tetany and ALS

He is 40 (almost 41) only slightly overweight and tries to be as active as possible under the circumstances.
Thank you in advance for any help you can offer me :)
Jenn

[MoChridhe]

*UPDATE*  So we went to the doc, our regular family doc, and she said, "Well let's refer you to a Neurologist..the neuro surgeon fixed the big problem and now we can have tests done as to the length of the damage that has not responded to the relieving of the pressure on the nerve. Muscle relaxent and pain meds in the meantime. She took blood AGAIN to see if there are any discrepancies in his B12 or Magnesium..she will call if anything is found to be a red flag.

She also recommended that I do a bit more research in "cervical myelopathy or sponylopathy" as this is what Rick seems to be suffering from, displaying classic symptoms of damage to the spinal  nerve. Anyone with a personal experince with these is welcome to post :)

She also said we definately should look into disability now since the problem has not resolved itself and it has been a little over a year now since the surgery. ( He was denied the first time around even though the examiner found a noticable difference in his measurements comparing each leg, which is where I suspected the possible wasting)
Appt. made for the 22nd of March with neurologist so I will update then, if not sooner :)

Thank you all again for the helpful posts! We feel like we have at paddles on this creek we seem to be traveling on :)

[MoChridhe]

Thank you Theasian :) That is definately something I would throw at the doc to look at, he is not a person that likes to take medicine so I can be pretty sure it is not from chemicals of that sort. I want to be able to go into the office with him and tell them "Please, lets just rule out some of this, this, and this ya know?"
Thank you so much for your input:)

[theasian]

Magnesium and vit B12 supplements may also help.

I'm no doctor but to me it sounds like he has myoclonic dystonia. Myoclonus is involuntary jerking of the muscles while dystonia is the painful contracting of muscles. Treatment depends on the cause, usually if no cause can be found muscle relaxants are used and anti-epileptics can also be used for the myoclonus. That's a very layman's description of it, maybe you could speak to the neuro about it to get more info about.

Take care

[MoChridhe]

Thank you, we WILL try this and let you know! :)

[allmymarbles]

This is a long shot. Give him 200 mg of vitamin B1 and then 100 mg a few days running. It worked for the spasms and cramps that I got in my legs and sometimes my hands. Also make sure he takes a multi vitamin and mineral supplement.