There is such a thing.


I had it for about a year after my stroke.

You have my sympathy....
I have the same startle response and have had it for decades. Mine came from Lyme Disease...never had it before that. It is not only noises, it is sudden movements like my cats silently jumping up on the bed when I don't see them coming.

I have found MS and Lyme Disease have many overlapping symptoms.
Many times folks with LD are incorrectly dx'ed with MS and vice versa. Me included.

On my first brain scan had a lot of what they called back then, UBO's that apparently looked like the same brain lesions caused by MS.

I make my family and friends nuts with my oversized startle response because I sometimes shriek or drop things. It is SO out of proportion to the stimuli. I have a friend who has had several concussions and he said he has the same startle response.

Just another symptom to try and grin and bear.
My best, D.

I totally forgot about this.....I nearly jump out of bed when my cats jump up and I don't see them coming. Sometimes I'm almost asleep and it scares me so badly it takes forever to fall asleep again.

The PBE is one I'm not sure if I have or have always had or if I'm just in general an inappropriate person. I used to get into to so much trouble at school because I would start laughing any time the teachers scolded me. And I don't mean a little chuckle, we're talking about ready to pee myself laughter to where I certainly couldn't tell them that I didn't think it was funny at all. It's not very convincing when you're holding your sides and wiping tears from your eyes from laughing so hard, that you can apprieciate the seriousness of your transgression.

I never really seem to cry inappropriately though, just laugh. If I'm sad I might cry... or laugh... if I'm in trouble for anything it's always laughter... If I'm in pain it's almost always laughter though I have cried occasionally, rarely but it has happened. I do cry when I'm mad, like really fuming and nearly homicidal raging mad, but at the same time I only ever get that way when I'm sincerely disappointed in someone or if someone tried to harm me or mine. So I don't know if I'm crying because I'm so sad that some could disappoint me so much or crying because I have visions of the worst that could have happened to me and mine, or if I'm just messed up.

But everyone around me pretty much takes it as a part of me, it always has been, so if I'm rolling on the ground laughing my head off, they know I just hurt something really bad... If they try to pull the 'authority' figure on me and I laugh... well that's just what I do. (And you would not believe the number of tickets you can get out of doing that... I was shocked I've only ever had 2 tickets in my entire driving record, but I've been pulled over near countless times... It seems trying very hard to restrain laughter makes you seem like a quite the jolly driver who's not going to give an officer a hard time at all, so you must respect them very much. Which I totally do, don't get me wrong and all my transgressions were outside of residential areas and generally going with the flow of traffic where I was picked out of the crowd.)

My uncle did apprieciate that facet of me though when he was going in for his heart surgeries, my mother too. Since I'm certainly one to keep things light in serious situations.