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Negative MRI & EMG...suggestions?

Hello everyone.


I’m a 21 year old male. I have been experiencing left side tingling and sometimes numbness. When I say left side, I mean my entire left side, i.e. face, torso, arm, hand, and leg. I’m also having twitches all over my body. I went to Florida back in June and got sick with what I was told, a salivary gland infection. My chest then became very tight shortly after and it made it hard to breathe at times. I still sometimes experience this but not nearly as often as I did. I came back home after about 2 weeks of being sick in Florida and then I started to have numbness in my arm when I was driving home and then it spread to the entire left side of my body. I don’t so much have the numbness anymore, but it’s more of a “disconnected” feeling. It’s rather strange and I’m not sure how to manage it. This started at the beginning of July and the muscle twitches started shortly after.

My family doctor ordered an EMG which came back normal and I saw a neurologist last week and he ordered an MRI which has also came back negative as well.

I have been through several blood tests for infections and Lyme disease and autoimmune diseases and such. I’m not sure what else can be causing this...I don’t want to just assume ALS because that’s a worse case scenario but I also know that ALS can be missed in the beginning if that’s what this is.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be great.
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Avatar universal
Wondering how you're all doing now?  It's 3 years since the onset of my symptoms.  Things got MUCH better, and now I'm more or less OK, with a flaring up of nerve pain in some areas, and tingling in my face, if I get particularly stressed or angry.
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Avatar universal
I've been twitching everywhere, and. I mean everywhere, for 3 months. Have an EMG Tuesday. Check B6. If you have to much it can cause neuropathy. Probably only if take supplements.
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Let me know how your EMG goes.
Just had it. Wasn't bad, was expecting worse. Everything is normal per them. Still twitching but who knows.  My hypochondria will probably never end.
Well I’m really glad to hear it was normal. I’m so sorry that the path continues. Months later I’m still twitching away too.
Avatar universal
Same thing happened with me, but with Numbness, I also had some unusual muscle/nerve pain which comes and go randomly anywhere in the body. That pain felt like different from all the pain I had experience before. This started unusually before 3 months after a very stressful weekend.

I also did EMG, NCV, MRI, 100's of blood test, urine test, ECG, Stress ECG, Doppler ECG, XRAY. Everything came out normal except my Vitamin D level. My Vitamin D was 13 , recommended is 32-100 I believe. I started developing twitching constantly whole body non-stop since last month which hasn't gone yet. Although after taking Vitamin D pills with Muscle relaxant by unusual random pain went away mostly. But twitching is still there. To be double sure, I did magnesium test and it came normal.

Have you checked Vitamin-D ? Its deficiency can causes all this
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I don’t believe we’ve done a Vitamin D screening but I know my B-12 was a little low. Not extremely by any means but it was on the lower end of the normal range.
Avatar universal
Hi!  I have similar symptoms to yours, and all tests have come back negative.  The probability of your having ALS is very small, so please don't worry about it.

If your EMG/NC and MRI (brain? upper cervical?) are clear then a lot of potentially unpleasant diagnoses can be ruled out.  Likewise, seeing your blood tests are clear for autoimmune diseases is good.  Was your blood also tested for Vit B, Magnesium etc?

Despite not diagnosing the problem, I was initially prescribed pregabalin but stopped after a week due to side effects.  I then started on amitriptyline, and 50mg/day mostly masks my symptoms (occasional tingling/numbness & very rare twitching).  Other than some tiredness when starting the amitriptyline, I tolerate it very well.

I'm currently seeing "NUCCA" chiropractor, and after some sessions my symptoms have eased but I still have a way to go before I feel "normal" again.
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Hey there,

My neurologist called me back and they are putting me on prednisone for 2 weeks to see if that does anything and if it doesn't, they are going to put me on some sort of nerve medication to help dull the symptoms but not fix anything (literal quote).

I asked about bartonella and the EBV virus and he doesn't think its either of those so I'm kind of lost right now and I'm not sure what else to do. I would much rather know what's going on with me rather than just given medicine to help dull or stop the symptoms.
Hi McAdams, since last posting I switched from amitriptyline to nortryptyline (as I was getting terrible dry mouth), and the symptoms came back.  The NUCCA chiropractic sessions help, but I'm still a long way from where I was in January.  I've also put on 20lbs since starting amitriptyline, which I'm not at all happy about!

I did visit my Primary Care Doc again, and he has ordered a second, high-definition MRI of my cervical spine, as well as tests for batonella and herpes I & II and heavy metals.  He felt that further tests for EBV and CMV would be a "last resort" as these are rare without other more obvious symptoms.

So it's a case of keeping the symptoms dulled and seeing what these tests reveal...  I hope you've found some relief at this point.

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