any ideas?

[DD516]

Hey there everyone.  I posted twice on this adventure in the past two years and have never got any replies, so maybe third times the charm with advice.  okay, so here's the whole story, three years, in a few sentences.  I got sick, with a fever and strep, took biaxin xl for two days, started shaking, not very blatantly, but felt shaky and could see body shake slightly.  tested for MS, lymes, dehydration, anxiety, dont remember what else they tested for.  since then, my blood pressure has gone up and now im on meds for it, but that was probably due to other lifestyle factors as well.  also had mri done, nothing, and some electro something thing, the report with lots of lines on it and they put electrodes all over ur head, nothing showed.  then, i got began getting headaches, different random areas of head, tended to be on left side, or left part of forehead, sometimes, back, once in a while on the right.  they progressed and became daily to constant, 8 to 10 times a day lasting for who knows how long.  headaches are dull but constant.  the shaking, forgot to say, is still present.  have not stopped shaking yet for three years already.  just a constant, unchanging, subtle shaking, felt all over the body.  then, what happened, along with constant shaking, constant headaches, was the speech/language problems.  a little like verbal apraxia (mixing up the sounds orders and stuff), but that was just sometimes, not all the time, but there were articulation problems, nothing noticable to naive listeners, but i noticed.  as far as language-reading i began reading words that were not on the page, usually mistaked one word at a time only.  numbers, developed a sort of number dyslexia, and for me, my number recall was always great.  now it's shot., a little bit of word finding difficulty, saying the wrong word, and wriitng too, write the wrong word then intended.  dizziness also, lasting a long time, few hours at least, perhaps due to meds.  now, here's my latest, my constant headaches dropped significantly in october, now are a few times a week, usually left front, or just left.  shaking still present always, dizziness, still easily triggered.  speech and language is bad, progressively worse than before.  use the wrong somehow related words in conversation, short term memory is awful-forgetting things that happened five minutes ago, forgetting what someone said to me a few minutes ago, not really properly encoding the memories i guess i dunno, def misplacing things a lot more.  so i think that's it.  thanx for listening.  any ideas, would be helpful.  it's pretty bad for me, im about to be a speech language pathologist, so i learn about these neurological things all the time, and now that my own speech sounds so bad, im wondering if im really going to be able to affect change with my clients.  anyways, any advice is appreciated, thanx.

[ggreg]

Dear DD,
Since the MRI came up clear, you have to think of this in more ordinary ways.  Your primary complaint to me is shaking, so let me put that aside for a minute, and talk about all the other stuff.

The headaches and reading problems are very likely on account of your eyes.  You must to go to an optomitrist and opthalmologist to get them checked, for glaucoma readings and also for some glasses.  If you already have them, you may need a new prescription.

ALL the rest of it can be chalked up to being tired and/or not eating right.  Yes, it's true, if you are working or studying too many hours, not resting well, or not getting enough nutrition, you can become forgetful, dizzy, garble your words, and so on.  You need to check over what you're eating and not eating, they can even draw blood to check your vitamin, mineral, electrolyte levels and so forth, very simple test.  And you yourself should know if you've been pushing yourself too hard, to where you aren't getting proper rest.  Sleep is complex, you have to exercise enough, relax enough, not stick to one task too long at a time, those sorts of things, in order to get quality sleep.  You're studying to be a speech pathologist, which if you'll notice most physicians, who are Type A people, will have an all-consuming hobby on the side, like golf or whatever, in order to distract their work focus.

Now, as for your shaking, since it's been going on for two years, that is the one thing that I cannot explain away, other than possibly you may be short on B vitamins, protein, omega-3s, or other stuff that work on nerve transmission.  So, the main thing I think of when I heard shaking is, could be you have the beginnings of Parkinson's, which involves a shake of the fingers, hands and head, for example, so you could ask your doc about that possibility.

I need to mention a couple other things in general.  You said your dizziness might be from meds.  You should most definitely review the side effects of any and all medications you're on, and if any of your symptoms are listed, perhaps you should talk to the prescribing doc about changing the medication.  Another thing is, the strep you had at the outset, and also the drug you were given to help it, either of those two can cause some oddball irregularities, so also next time you see your doc, you need to ask specifically about the strep and drug you took for it.

Hope this helps point you in the right direction.  Keep in mind before you explain all this away that your MRI was clear.  That is key to figuring out what is going on with yourself.  Then maybe a couple things I've mentioned here will jump out at you as perhaps being what's been going on.  Keep us posted.
GG