Yesterday was my appointment to get an EMG and a nerve conduction study done to find out more about my twitchy legs. The technician’s name was Diane and she had me take off my shoes and socks and lie on the table. Diane asked if I was having twitches now and if they were visible. Unfortunately, none were active that I could point her to (though I noticed them again later on the way home).
She then attached a few electrodes to my ankle area and used what is essentially a cattle prod device to run electric shocks into my muscle while a computer charted the responses.
“This is a little more active than I expected,” I told her, not expecting shocks. “I was thinking this would be more passive.”
“Well, we’ve got to check your muscles’ responses to the electricity,” she responded without looking up.
The ankle shocks felt like a series of five small taps and were fairly tolerable. At the end of these five shocks, though, she would poke her cattle prod under my knee to gauge my upper leg.
ZAP! My leg would lurch upward with the shock. After one or two of these larger shocks I decided I could do without them!
“Say, uh, this isn’t demagnetizing my credit cards, is it?” I joked.
Diane laughed. “No, no.”
Then in ten minutes we were done. She asked me to put my shoes back on and she left the room. I saw the computer screen filled with squiggly waveforms and wished later I had snapped a picture of them. With a quick wave at the receptionist desk I was on my way.
As for my twitching, I think the mineral supplements may be helping, though the twitching still has not stopped completely. Once every 15 minutes or so I will notice a twitch in my quadricep or hamstring. They have lessened in intensity and frequency but have not stopped completely.
Tomorrow is my follow-up appointment where I should learn more from my neurologist what it all means. We’ll see.