Hi All,
New poster here on the forum, nice to meet you all. I’ll try and make it as brief as possible.
Had OCD for around 14 years, mostly related to health. Had its ups and down but i am at a particularly low point at the moment.
It all started when i noticed a dent in my left thumb area. This sent me down the rabbit hole of MND. Started to perceive that arm was weak which led to constant strength testing. The twitches began. After a while my girlfriend basically forced me to the docs because i was spending all day and all night locked away strength testing, checking for atrophy and scouring for twitches. GP went through my history and gave me a neurological weakness test, said he could find no clinical weakness and looked at my thumb dent, concluding that it wasn’t atrophy as depending on my thumb position it could appear or disappear and was almost certainly how the muscle looked. He said he had no evidence of any physical issue and therefore further testing was not necessary and would just increase my anxiety. I agreed and i said i’d carry on with my weekly CBT sessions. Although the symptoms never fully disappeared, they lessened and i felt reassured for a couple of days.
Fast forward a month and i was back in the same place. The arm feeling weak alarms me but it performed exactly the same as the other arm. Went back and saw a different GP, explained the above again. He did another neurological exam, including extra tests, checked my cranial nerves, did my reflexes, etc. Said the tests were perfect and he can find no evidence of clinical weakness or anything abnormal with the reflexes etc. At this point and never having been on medication in all my 14 years i asked about the medications i could go on and was prescribed 50mg Sertraline to combine with my CBT.
I started 4 days ago and have been breaking the pill in half to get 25mg per day at the moment. Looking to up it to the full 50mg after 8-10 days. I still have the weakness feeling but my twitches have somewhat improved. I am getting a slight tremor and an internal shaking feeling and my hand on the left is somewhat clumsy. Also, this weird pins and needles patch on my tongue.
This particular worry has been going on for approx 3 months now. Another contributing factor to my issues could be that i hardly eat or drink that much all day, i haven’t exercised in about 2 years properly and i used to five times a week and i wake up about 3 times a night in fear that i have this horrendous disease that means i wont be able to see my 1 year old son grow up.
Are these possible side effects of the medication that have been experienced by any of you?
I really want to trust both the GPs but with health anxiety it is not that easy. Would you be satisfied with their evaluations?
Is this MND or anxiety plus all the other contributing factors?
Will or does Sertraline work?
Keeping it brief didn’t work. Apologies.
I would love to hear you opinions.
Thanks,
J.