Good, Good, Good…Leg Vibrations
I woke up at 5:12 a.m. today with the uncontrollable urge to stretch my limbs. I stretched, and as usual my muscles all contracted at once, like a collective spasm. It’s frustrating and not at all therapeutic like you’d think a wake-up stretch should be.
But this is normal for me now, and most of the time it leads to a charlie horse style cramp at the base of my neck. That clenching is always followed by a pulsing and whooshing of blood in my head that gives me an intense headache. I’ve never actually timed it, but if I had to guess the headache lasts anywhere between 5 and 15 seconds. When the pulsing calms, the headache leaves too.
That lovely little experience is then followed by what I call leg vibrations. My legs look fine, but inside it feels like they’re buzzing or shaking very rapidly. If I could draw, my artistic representation of the experience would look blurry, like a tine on a tuning fork that’s just been whacked.
After several minutes the vibrations quit. This morning, for instance, my left leg wrapped up its shenanigans just a minute or so earlier than my right leg. While I waited for the odd sensations to dissipate, I had the thought that I should log these things in my Fibro Mapp app.
So I did.
While the vibrations are weird and it’s annoying that they sometimes wake me up from sleep, they don’t hurt. That has made them a back-burner symptom for me. But since I’ve been Googling everything related to multiple sclerosis lately, I was like “Why not see if this could be connected too?”
Leg vibrations are totally a thing.
MS isn’t the only explanation, of course. And I do wonder if my nortriptyline prescription could be a culprit. Even though I’m on the lowest possible dose, it can cause some MS-like symptoms according to Physician’s Desk Reference. That alone isn’t enough for me to bail on a potential MRI though, because, plenty of my nerve symptoms predate my starting nortriptyline in July.
I’m not sure of anything. Basically just thinking out loud here, because I got notice from my primary doctor’s office yesterday that she has already sent the referral for me to go to the MS Center at Illinois Neurological Institute in Peoria. Consequently, I’ve kicked up my overthinking habit a notch or two as I wonder if the hour-and-a-half drive one way and all the subsequent visits and hassles will be worth spending my precious, precious spoons.
