I hit my head after fainting back in June. I didn't have concussion symptoms until two days later, and ended up going to the ER with what I thought were seizures (uncontrollable non-stop jerking). The ER doc did
NOT do an EEG, just gave me lots of valium and dilantin to stop the jerking, then set me up with a neurologist.
The neurologist ran an MRI of the head and that was clear. She prescribed klonopin for when the jerking is particularly bad and said that eventually this would go away. I'm trying to NOT take the klonopin unless I just can't take the jerking anymore.
Since I hit my head, the symptoms come and go. They include:
- Tingling in my feet and hands- sometimes the tingling goes up further in my arms and legs
- Jerking- like when a doctor tests your reflexes. I feel the same kind of 'zing' then off goes the body part.
- Trembling in my right hand
- A tick in my right hand, mostly noticeable when I'm resting my hand on my computer mouse- because it constantly 'right-click's the mouse bringing up the annoying right-click menu
- Off balance when I walk or stand
- When standing in line, I wobble
- When I'm walking, I feel like I'm being pulled to the right
- My typing stinks and I used to be a good typist. My job is communications for a large firm, so this really bothers me and is slowing me down. I'm constantly making typos and needing to fix them- although I noticed something interesting yesterday... if I'm retyping something I'm reading off a piece of paper, my typing is fine except for the occasional extra letter caused by my finger ticking.
- I forget words and stop mid-sentence and it takes time to to try to find the word. I do that with writing too (using my thesaurus a lot these days!).
- Constantly grinding my teeth day and night
The tremors and jerking stop when I'm moving around. For example, I learned last night that if I continually shake my leg- I don't jerk. When I'm relaxed, that's when it happens.
It seems to get worse when I'm tired. Not sure if all the jerking around is making me tired, or being tired is causing me to jerk around.
All I know is that it's scary to have a body doing things that I don't want it to do. I'm not obsessing about this, or trying not to anyway. It's just terribly annoying and embarrassing especially when I'm in meetings at work where everyone can see me.
I had a sleep study last week because after hitting my head, my sleep has been HORRIBLE (the neurologist put me on a low dose of seroquel to help). I see my neurologist on Monday to go over the results.
I know that PD is usually something that gradually happens- but my grandmother had PD and some of my symptoms look an awful like hers when she was alive. It's just weird that they'd suddenly happen after hitting my head and it gets better and worse depending on how tired I am.
Anyone have any opinions?
Thanks in advance for any responses.
~Lori