Strange symptoms

[Mira6464]

I am a 39 yr old fe in pretty good health.
Known conditions I have are HBP, PCOS, cold urticaria and mild mitral valve prolapse. I have frequent headaches and am constantly fatigued. A few yrs ago I had a CT that was neg for the headaches.
I have been experiencing strange symptoms on and off for the last couple of years, but lately they seem to have gotten worse.
They are:
Tingling in my hands/face.
Slight tremor in my thumbs.
Left eye twitching almost daily.
Increasing clumsiness. I can reach for an object behind another object, I know the other is there, but I always knock it over. I do this all the time.
I've been having more and more trouble getting my words to come out. It's like my mouth can't keep up with my mind anymore.
Increasing forgetfullness. It's almost scary how I forget things now.
Varying degrees of muscle weakness/pain for no known reason.
Sometimes my extremities will feel numb (almost like vibrations), but it usually doesn't last more than a few hours.
My typing has gotten worse (The majority of my job is typing).

I have no known injury that would contribute to these symptoms.

With this I'm getting depressed/mood swings and afraid to go to the doctor. I am quite shy and feel that my symptoms are so small that I will get blown off.
Your opinion would be greatly appreciated and if you think I should go get examined it might be the push I need to do so.
Thank you.

[mercury_man22]

Thanks for the information.  Workers comp told me that I could appeal but that my appeal would be to them.  Of course they fail too tell you about what all you are entitled too.

I want too sue my former employer and I told workers comp that I would sue them if they try prevent it.  The person that handles my case was surprised to learn that I had talk to the legal department and was informed that I could sue the employer.  So she is not very happy but that is too bad.

I am 35... Yes 35; had too check that.  I went from perfectly healthy with no problems age 33 too being in death's house not just on his doorstep.  Some how I escaped, for how long I have no idea, I had what doctors figure was a double heart seizure a couple months ago.  

I have lots of medical information from specialists that indicates all my problems are the result of the heavy metals.  I have even more information from current research that backs up the doctors reports.  Even so the doctors have not figured out everything that is going wrong.  At least now we know the why is heavy metal poisoning.

I got a copy of the investigators report showing all the violations that had been found.
It also contained the levels reported by the company.  Based on these the levels were said to be absurd for arsenic and excessive for cobalt.  Still no charges were laid.

I got a copy of the report submitted to the federal government by the employer and it has levels 2 to 3 times higher then reported to the investigators.  I also have documents from my former manager that reports levels 20 times higher then what was reported to the investigators.  This information was also kept from the federal government.

I have documents from one of the owners which he expected me to sign.  He expected me to give up all my rights under every law set to protect workers in order to get 3 weeks pay for lack of notice when he terminated my position.  I did not sign it.  My group manager offered me medical leave in front of witness but the company later denied this and refused to provide any benefits.

I have documents that show the company refused to provide the information on exposures to myself and my specialists even when they are required too by law.

I have proof that they failed to inform me about what I was working with and failed to provide me with proper protection.  They knowingly and willing exposed me to highly toxic and radioactive material without proper protection in order to save money and better their bottom line.  Basically it comes down to being murder for profit.

Sounds like something impossible but I have learned that it happens all the time and the governments around the world are now making part of their criminal codes for what they term corporate killing.  This is the willful disregard for the health and safety of workers or the public causing injury or death in order to benefit the corporation.

time for me too go.  I get tired fast any more

[mercury_man22]

have you been a accident at any point and had neck injury or whiplash

does the numbeness tingles get worse if you put your chin too your chest

[GeriS]

No toxin exposure to my knowledge.  Although our son was going to UW and working as a cook on a commercial fishing boat when he had his first ALS symptoms.  He told me that the drinking water was in a hold that had previously held fuel then was cleaned out and filled with water.  He wondered if a chemical residue remained and that might have caused his ALS.  But, could ALS be triggered so quickly after exposure?  He was sent home from the ship when the ALS symtoms first appeared.

I can't imagine when I might have been exposed to toxins.  Life has been pretty "ordinary" for me.  I no doubt had liver disease for as long as 20 years before I was diagnosed and the joint pain and other possibly neurologic symptoms started  up almost immediately when I first got sick from AIH (Autoimmune Hepatitis).  We've lied a pretty ordinary life, mostly in Washington, California and Oregon except for a few years in Switzerland.  But as I said, the autoimmmunity is always there, but something  had to trigger it.  I'll probably never know what that was.  

The numbness in my lower lip is slightly worse today.  I wonder if I'll ever get any answers?  But neurological problems can b4e especially hard to diagnose, I've been told.  How can they treat something that they can't identify?
Thanks again,
Geri

[kwag]

Dear Geri, I don't know what to say.  I read your post and  I want to reply but I really am taken aback.........  Could your family have been exposed to significant toxins?  Have you ever tried to go through detoxification?  That's the best I can do for now.  It seems to me that your body is heavy laden with toxins and you liver can no longer keep up.  There are very safe methods to help your liver and lighten its load.  You can look up detoxification on google.  Check out chelation also.  How do you eat?  Do you eat lots of good raw vegetables? There could be lots of action that you could take to possibly help your body to heal.  I believe in God and I believe in prayer and I will be speaking to God about you.  I pray right now that He helps you.  He knows what is wrong and how to fix it and He can make sure it gets done.  May He help you to sleep a peaceful sleep that comes only from Him so that your faith can be strengthend as well as your health.  God bless, Geri

[GeriS]

This must be the place for me, since most of what I've read is familiar.  I don't know if I'm grateful or sad to see that so many are going through the same thing I go through trying to get to the bottom of what is going on with my body.

I've always been "well".  In fact, I suspect that my friends and family have viewed me as being nearly indomitable.  Wrong!  In the mid 1990's everything started going wrong with my family.  Our oldest son was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease about the same time my husband had a minor heart attack, and while hospitalized they found lung cancer from asbestos exposure when he was jut 18.  After that he had back surgery, and in the meantime I had a hysterectomy because of extremely high CA 125 values in lab tests.  Usually that's an indicator of possible ovarian cancer.  Later, I found out that it also can be an indicator of Autoimmune Hepatitis, a "rare" liver disease.  So, I had an unnecessary hysterectomy and while they were at it, a repair of a mild bladder prolapse - which they botched so 9 months later they had to repeat the surgery.  More on that later.  But, it turned out that I didn't have a bladder prolapse at all.  I had a "vault" prolapse, which is much more serious. Anyhow, 1995 and 1996 were severe crisis years, to say the least.

Since our lives were clearly falling apart, we decided we had to move somewhere we might be better able to afford to live on whatever disability pay we could manage to get.  My husband is an engineer and of course, he was laid off because of "no work".  Ha. And his repeated hospitalizations had nothing to do with the lay off?  But, we were too beaten down by then to fight it.

So, we moved to Las Vegas.  We made the move with the help of my 19 year old nephew who we raised after my brother died, and our 21 year old grandson.  My husband was just out of the hospital from back surgery so most of the burdon of the move fell on me.  I wasn't even slightly hesitant to take on the job.

Shortly after our arrival in LV my husband found a job and went back to work.  I was tired all of the time by then and had a bizarre insomnia that kept me up all night, yet I would fall asleep at odd times, wherever I happened to be sitting, no matter what I was doing.  I've always been slim, but my stomach began to swell and so did my ankles.  I didn't really feel sick, but I saw a doctor who ordered some diagnostic tests.  The technician who did one of the ultrasounds told me to go home and call my doc immediately. He was a new doctor to me, and I wasn't able to reach him. Though the tech was clearly alarmed at something, the doctor never called.  After several weeks, while the swelling increased, I found a doctor through an ad in the paper for the opening of her new clinic.

I saw her only once and she ordered a fax copy of my ultrasound.  I left her office, walked into my house and the phone was ringing.  It was the doctor's office telling me to go immediately to the hospital and expect to be there for a "few" days.

Later she told me that she was certain I had pancreatic cancer.  There was a complete blockage of my bile ducts and gall bladder.  She did a liver biopsy as well as another test of the pancreas (actually, she called in a specialist to do the tests).

When I was finally back in my room, feeling good and goofy from the meds they'd given me, a succession of doctors started coming to see me.  The GI doc, who I'd never seen before, announced that I had PBC (Primary Biliary Cirrhosis) and would die in 2 to 5 years.  Just like that.  And I felt fine.

I had to wait for a specialist from Stanford who sees serious GI patients in Las Vegas once a month.  No meds, no treatment, just bed rest while I waited.  Finally, I was told that I actually had Autoimmune Hepatitis.  Like it sounds, my body was rejecting my liver because it did not "see" it as belonging to me.  I had stage IV cirrhosis and end stage liver disease, though I'd only been a very light social drinker and never  used drugs of any kind.  AIH is primarily a disease of very young women yet I was almost 60, so I didn't fit any profiles.  I was referred by my insurance company to Scripps in La Jolla for transplant evaluation and it was assumed I would go on the liver transplant waiting list.

But, it wasn't meant to be.  I started taking immunosuppressive drugs, Imuran and Prednisone, and gradually went into remission so despite my severely damaged liver, I no longer needed a transplant.

This is where the neurological symptoms come in.

I began to have severe muscle spasms in my back and the backs of my legs.  My feet felt like throbbing lumps.  The pain was constant.  Over the years I'd had symptoms I'd always ignored, but no longer.  Things like my lower lip swelling for no apparent reason.  In fact, today, six years later, my lower lip is going through one of it's swelling routines.  It's something that just happens to me and no one can explain why.  I have tremors in my hands but not all of the time, and I have many symptoms of Parkinsons but apparently I don't have Parkenson's.  I've been tested for everything.  Lupus, MS, conditions no one has ever heard of, and I don't have any of them.  No lesions on my brain.  Yet I sometimes will be sitting, start to doze and jerk violently  upright.  Scary.  My gait is wobbly sometimes and okay other times.  Sometimes I'm severely stooped and other times not at all.  I NEVER sleep for a full night.  Instead, I tend to fall asleep if I sit down and relax, which means that I often fall asleep while eating dinner, for example.  My husband has given up on trying to get me to go to bed, but instead just takes my fork out of my hand and moves my plate away from me and lets me do my thing. I will wake up at 2:30 AM or 4:00 AM and industriously begin to clean house or bake bread or pastries or whatever I feel inspired to do.  I love to read but that can't happen because that means I relax ergo I fall asleep.  I don't seem to have any cognizance problems and in fact, my mind is almost buzzing and my memory is as good as it ever has been or even better, though I forget specific names for people and things.  Yet I could dismantle and reassemble the computer or for that matter write a thesis if I had to.  

The constant pain is the biggest problem.  I can't take anything with Tylenol in it because of my liver disease so I'm using a Duragesic patch when I remember to put a new one on, and I have morphine for breakthrough pain, but I rarely take that either.  I know it's dumb to complain about constant pain yet forget to take pain meds, but that's the way it is.  But the pain is debilitating and causes severe fatigue when it's at it's worst.  Today it's bad, so I sit here - and my ankles are swollen.  If I try to walk I'll wobble and probably stagger from wall to wall as I walk down the hall.  I have some numbness in my feet, especially toes of my right foot, and some numbness in both hands that feel swollen but they aren't.  I'm told that I have severe spinal stenosis and maybe some herniated disks but I'm not seeing anyone for that nor am I seeing a neurologist.  We moved back to Oregon where we were born last December when our son, who owned the house we were living in, sold the house.  My huband has had another back surgery and another cancer surgery since 1996, and two possible strokes.  We are near destitute because we can't find work and I suspect we have physically aged dramatically because of our medical problems.  

What is going on?  These neurological symptoms came out of nowhere, about the time I was diagnosed with the liver disease so everyone assumes it's autoimmune, but could it all be caused by the Prednisone and Imuran instead?  Incidentally, our son died from his ALS the same day I was diagnosed in late 1997.  We believe that he committed suicide with the help of compassionate friends.  This is very common for people with ALS.  He coerced a younger brother to take him to Mazatlan where he had friends who he said would care for him.  He was near helpless by then.  He died a week later though his ALS wasn't yet that serious.  Life hasn't been very kind to us, but others have it worse. I know that.  I'd just like to know what might be going on with me now.  Parkinsons?  MS?  Lupus?  None of that?  Any ideas from anyone are welcome.

Take care,
Geri

[CCF-Neuro-M.D.-CS]

I do think you should see a doctor regarding this, and most likely a neurologist. These symptoms can not be localized to one particular area, and therefore more systemic disorders should be evaluated. Broad areas to have evaluated include connective tissue diseases, inflammatory conditions, and vitamin B12 dysfunction. A MRI of the brain may be reasonable to help exclude structural lesions. Good luck.