Hi Sue,
My weakness started in the deltoids and then spread down to my finger muscles and other areas. It is interesting to suddenly be aware of and specify exactly which muscles are involved in simple acts like clapping or holding a childīs wriggly hand when the act becomes myasthenic. I can point to the exact areas of weakness although I may have to look up the actual name of the muscle. Like Alice said there can be more muscles involved than you think. With the handwriting I found there were problems in at least 5 muscle areas including something going on around the 3rd & 4th digits.
Thanks for inspiring me back, Sue!
It was a coincidence that I read your post the same day as 3 weeks had passed without symptoms. I had been conducting my students yesterday and noticed my arms heavy (easy to spot with conducting!) especially around the deltoid areas. So I decided to check if the hands were also weak by doing another handwriting sample. (and no stress, no disturbances, no difference in temperature etc) This is what I came up with:
1) Sample 1 = YES!!!! Handwriting also myasthenic at the same time as deltoids are weak
2) Sample 2 = Oh!!!! Mestinon helps as usual
3) Sample 3= Oh!!!! After a 4 hour period writing is fatigable once again
Cooling the arm helps by using ice packs but I never thought to heat the arm up and see if itīs worse No and Iīm not going to do that!
Incidentally, It looks like I had 3 phases of
effectiveness and ineffectiveness of exercise:
1) It severely exacerbated muscle fatigability any time I tried it over the course of approx 3 year period. Physio told me he was worried if he gave me an exercise program he may do some damage whilst he thought the problem was a neuromuscular one and he didnīt know which one.
2) It felt like a neutral phase took over where it was generally OK to push water in a swimming pool with arms (not actually swim!) but the exercise wasnīt going anywhere. This lasted quite a number of months.
3) Exercise has started to be beneficial and positive. Muscles no longer feel they are in the minus.
Good luck with your weights, Sue. (By the way have you taken photos of your presently atrophied muscles just for your own records?)
Anacrusis
