zuelsbabe

About Me

It's been nearly 4 years since I started showing symptoms from myashtenia. At first I just blamed everythng on my thyroid. I have had hypothyroidism since I was in my teens. So when I was feeling tired and run down all the time and I thought my thyroid was off. I kept getting it checked, but everything was normal. Even the difficulty that I was having swallowing I managed to blame on my thyroid. About 9 or 10 months after I had started to notice all the problems I was having my yearly physical with my doctor and mentioned the trouble swallowing to her. She then proceeded to send me for a swallow study. They coated different types of food in barium and video taped it to see what happened. The person administering the test kept asking me if I had had a stroke because I was suffering from dysphagia. After being diagnosed with dysphagia I surfed the net and discovered that dysphagia is never a condition on its own. All the cause of dysphagia were quite unpleasant options as well. Alzheimers, Lou Gehrigs, brain tumors, stroke, MS and other scary condtions. So I was then sent to a gastroenterologist for and endoscopy to see if there was some abnormality or if acid reflux was causing the dysphagia. Everything from that was normal as well. Then I was sent to the neurologist and was once again told. "Wow, you're too young for this problem." I may be too young for it, but the problem was I still had it and had no clue what was causing it. The neurologist ran a series of blood work and nothing. She ran a single fiber test with acupunture needles. Finally, she ran an MRI to scan my brain. Nothing, still nothing to indicate what to do with me. She had no clue what was going on with me. Fortunately, we had ruled out Alzheimers, ALS, MS, brain tumors and a few other very bad conditions. So she referred me to a neuromuscular disorder specialist at the local University Medical Center. After three months of waiting to see the doctor I walked into his office and we went over all my symptoms and nothing seemed apparent. He told me you are a healthy individual, nothing seems out of order. He reviewed all my test and nothing seemed out of place. He suggested we watch this for a few months and see what was going on. By this point the swallowing had gotten much worse and just about everything I tried to eat was getting stuck in my throat. I think he could see the look of despair on my face and suggested I try take the Mestinon. Low cost drug, minimal side effects and we can see if it works. After nine months of not knowing what was wrong I was willing to try just about anything. So I started taking the mestinon. After about 2-3 weeks, I started noticing some small improvements. My neck and shoulders weren't hurting as bad, my eyes weren't as tired at the end of the day and my swallowing seemed to be improving. I called the doctor's office back and he setup another series of blood tests and an EMG. The blood tests still revealed nothing, but the EMG helped to shed some light on the situation. When the EMG test was administered and there was repetitive stimulus the decline in the response could be seen. We were finally 99% sure of the diagnosis. Myasthenia Gravis. After almost a year of eliminating conditions we finally found out what it was. As for the blood tests I am one of the lucky few that are what they call Serum negative. The antibodies I have can't be detected. I was later tested for the MUSK antibodies, but thes can't be detected either. The last step before we decided on a course of treatment was to have a CT scan to check for thymoma. Luckily this was negative, so immediate surgery was not needed.

It's been nearly 4 years since I started showing symptoms from myashtenia. At first I just blamed everythng on my thyroid. I have had hypothyroidism since I was in my teens. So when I was feeling tired and run down all the time and I thought my thyroid was off. I kept getting it checked, but everything was normal. Even the difficulty that I was having swallowing I managed to blame on my thyroid. About 9 or 10 months after I had started to notice all the problems I was having my yearly physical with