I don’t know what is happening to me. I’m losing feeling in my hands. The top of my head is tingling, like the chills, and now my tongue is going a little numb, my lips are tingling. Can the worms be giving me MS? (update 8/2009: neuropathy probably a result of the iron shots, not the hookworms.)
I’m dizzy, having heart palpatations, and muscle cramps. My eyelid is twitching. Sometimes another muscle involuntarily twitches, like in my back. I wrote to Dr. Terdiman and asked if nueropathy is common in Crohn’s. Could I have side effects from Flagyl a year later? He wrote it’s rare to get nueropathy, and certainly not from the Flagyl. I needed to get my B12 levels checked, and see a nuerologist. Great.
I go to the GP, and my reflexes are all fine. My blood pressure low as usual. My nerves seem to functioning without issue. My last B12 test, done months ago, was normal. I ask him could I have low calcium, magnesium, potassium? From over a year of diarrhea, and not taking any supplements? He says it’s possible, but the body has a good regulation system with calcium, and if there isn’t enough in the bloodstream, will pull it from the bones. He thinks I may just be dehydrated, since it came on right after a few days of bad diarrhea, my period, then a heat wave. If this is what not drinking enough water with electrolytes will do, I’m afraid.
I take a blood test and wait. I start taking calcium/magnesium pills and eat two bananas a day. I drink a lot of water. I cut out my black, strong Irish Breakfast tea. He thinks the twitching might be caffeine related, but I think months of 5-6 cups of high tannin tea has coated my intestines and blocked my calcium absorption, which was probably impaired to begin with. Then months of diarrhea have lowered my magnesium and pottasium, and finally, I am left with symptoms.
I call the nurse, and my levels are normal. No deficiencies. No diabetes. Urine test is clean. I do have an elevated CRP reading again; this time it’s 10.4 instead of 14, but normal is less than 1. My SED rate has dropped to 6 though. I’m confused. So my chronic inflammation is going down – I started with 35 before hookworm, but my CRP is remaining elevated. So am I inflamed or not?
I try to quel the diarrhea and go back on SCD, but eat very little fiber. It helps. I finally get a few days of solid bowel movements. They feel wonderful coming through, but are a little thin, sometimes skinny. I only last for a few days before my appetite kicks in and I eat tomatoes from the garden, pecans, pears. The loose stools return, and I am back up in the night.
The nueropathy continues, but it gets a little better. And then the arthritis returns in my ankles. My wrists are sore again, I eat more fiber, shit all day, the heat goes up, the tingling comes back. Now my wrists are sore, my tongue is numb, and I get tingles on my head. Will the symptoms never cease?
I am fed up with waiting, fed up with the amount of perfection required in order to give me a midly normal day. I must take 5 cal/mal supplements to get a full dose; I never get in more than 3. I have to cut out my one love: black tea, reduced to a weak cup in the morning, then I drink green tea throughout the day. I cut out marijuana, since it makes everything worse, but I can’t cut it out completely, because I need some happiness, some diversion from this scare that has no name.
10 months I’ve been waiting for this stupid worm to work its wonders, and I am left with new symptoms, arthritis that I never had before, nueropathy and stabbing pains in my toes, chills on my head, and I’m supposed to drive to visit my best friend tomorrow, see her in Shakespeare, and I am scared that my cramping calves won’t make it, that I won’t be able to talk quickly because of my tongue numbness, but I go.
I’m tired of putting off my life. I will not wait anymore.
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