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valium would have been nice
2010-Feb-26, Friday 11:08 amI did not know that valium-sedated electromyography appointments were a possibility. I certainly would have requested that option that if I had known it was available. Needles, electricity, and pain are none of them my friends, so I knew that today would be a difficult experience.
I finished my EMG testing this morning. It was painful and nerve wrecking, in both senses of that phrase. The doctor said that zhey collected the needed data, but zhey still needed to run it through other programs in order to produce analyses for sending on to my neurologist. I'll check later about getting copies of that information for my own records. I didn't take the time to ask this morning. I just wanted out of there. I noticed while exiting that I left a patch of sweat on the paper that covered the exam table, even though the room was cold on this Minnesota winter morning.
The good news, though, is that my body cooperated and developed a twitch over my right shin bone during today's exam. Zhey said that it would be impossible for me to intentionally produce such a motion even if I tried. (Yay, confirmation!) Zhey also said that it is possible to develop symptoms such as mine even at my current levels of B12, so I guess that diagnosis remains a possibility. (That news is semi-troubling. B12 is an "essential" vitamin because lack of it can kill.)
EMG testing involved two phases. 1) First was the nerve-wrecking muscular phase. It involved sticking electrode patches onto my body at two locations and then zhey would send electrical signals through the muscle to make it twitch. It was intense and unpleasant, and it made my whole body nervous, tense, and jumpy. 2) Afterwards was the painful nerve phase. For this step, zhey stuck tiny needles into my body to measure the electrical signals in my motor neurons both in a resting state and while actively pushing against zheir own resistive force. Some of it was perfectly fine, but some of it was painful. We're talking needles in nerves, here. That kind of pain.
Valium would have been good, but I also wanted to just "plow through" the exam today so I could be ready to visit the neurologist in two more weeks. If there's ever another EMG test, at least now I enough enough to ask for the sedated version of it. I'm still feeling jumpy and panicked, an hour later. Next time, I'll make arrangements for transportation to/from the clinic, and then I'll take their drugs.
I finished my EMG testing this morning. It was painful and nerve wrecking, in both senses of that phrase. The doctor said that zhey collected the needed data, but zhey still needed to run it through other programs in order to produce analyses for sending on to my neurologist. I'll check later about getting copies of that information for my own records. I didn't take the time to ask this morning. I just wanted out of there. I noticed while exiting that I left a patch of sweat on the paper that covered the exam table, even though the room was cold on this Minnesota winter morning.
The good news, though, is that my body cooperated and developed a twitch over my right shin bone during today's exam. Zhey said that it would be impossible for me to intentionally produce such a motion even if I tried. (Yay, confirmation!) Zhey also said that it is possible to develop symptoms such as mine even at my current levels of B12, so I guess that diagnosis remains a possibility. (That news is semi-troubling. B12 is an "essential" vitamin because lack of it can kill.)
EMG testing involved two phases. 1) First was the nerve-wrecking muscular phase. It involved sticking electrode patches onto my body at two locations and then zhey would send electrical signals through the muscle to make it twitch. It was intense and unpleasant, and it made my whole body nervous, tense, and jumpy. 2) Afterwards was the painful nerve phase. For this step, zhey stuck tiny needles into my body to measure the electrical signals in my motor neurons both in a resting state and while actively pushing against zheir own resistive force. Some of it was perfectly fine, but some of it was painful. We're talking needles in nerves, here. That kind of pain.
Valium would have been good, but I also wanted to just "plow through" the exam today so I could be ready to visit the neurologist in two more weeks. If there's ever another EMG test, at least now I enough enough to ask for the sedated version of it. I'm still feeling jumpy and panicked, an hour later. Next time, I'll make arrangements for transportation to/from the clinic, and then I'll take their drugs.