Tremors

I didn't think anything could be worse than Kevin Bacon's performance in Tremors, but I'd rather have to sit through that movie every Saturday night than live with the tremors I'm now experiencing.

This is all new to me.  Basically, when I saw Dr. Kendall in Atlanta, she observed some neuromuscular damage to my thighs.  When she pressed down on my thighs, there was slight tremor when I resisted the push.  My arms and other parts were normal, no tremor.

That has all changed.  About two months ago, I started experiencing tremors in my arms and hands.  Sometimes the tremors were so bad that I couldn't write or type.  I discontinued the statin I was on (Livalo 2 mg), and the tremors seemed to improve slightly, but didn't go away.

There is a lot of stress in my life right now.  The patent system has taken four big hits in the past few years (Bilski, the America Invents Act, Myriad, and Alice), each of which either weakened the ability of independent inventors to enforce patents, made them more expensive to obtain, or just did such a poor job of explaining the law that they increased the attorneys fees involved in getting a patent.  Since I've primarily worked as an independent inventor for the past decade, you can imagine how this impacts my work and income.  At the same time, one of my kids is going through some very expensive and tough times and that's stressing me out -- a lot.  Finally, given the finances, I've mostly stopped the hobbies I had been using to destress.  [Update 6/8/15: Looks like there is some validation for my subjective observation that patent value and liquidity have crashed in recent years, per this post].

Since we know that stress is a major trigger for CPT2 episodes, I'm left to wonder whether the tremors are an indication that I'm now in a constant state of baseline muscle breakdown.  My last 2 CK tests, taken when I wasn't feeling particularly symptomatic, were both several times above normal (of course, several times above normal isn't a huge deal, given that I was hospitalized at several hundred times above normal last summer).

I've tried eating more, exercising less, meditation, medication, less medication, just about everything, and I'm still experiencing tremor.  I was at dinner last night with my wife, the kids were in the care of my mom, and I looked down and saw my fingers trembling.  It is all very scary and weird.

I'm fairly convinced it is stress, but fairly convinced and convinced are miles apart when it comes to health.

I've been advised to get a brain MRI just to make sure it is not a brain issue.  I'm going to do it, but even the doctor recommending the brain MRI is doing it just in case -- we're all pretty sure it is CPT2.

On the bright side, at least the tremors aren't debilitating, and I did learn to use Dragon Dictate for when I have trouble typing.  So at least there's that.