The Lupus Twitch

So for those of you who don't know, I have Lupus (you can read more about the disease at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupus_erythematosus ) .  Yeah, it sucks.  It's been a crazy last few months trying to discover what it is that's been making me so tired, swollen, and sick, but now I'm finally starting to feel better.  YEAH!  My doctor has me on "steroids."  And Russ keeps making fun of me that I'm going to want to join American Gladiators soon! :) So the point of telling you all this is a funny story of what happened to me today!  I've been doing a lot of tests lately to see what organs the disease has affected.  So far it hasn't been anything too crazy, but they wanted me to go and do a neurology exam to test my muscles and nerves.  I didn't know what to expect, I thought they would put a metal cap on my head and they would know what was going on.  

Yeah, that wasn't the case.  So I go, and the doctor is this little tiny Russian woman.  She tells me to take off my shoes and hop on the table.  She then has me lay down and she hooks up these wires on my arms and then on my hands and she she sends these nice electric shocks through my arm to see how my nerves react.  It's funny because my arm and hand muscles keep jerking. You know how in Harry Potter, the Cructecous curse makes people do things without them wanting to do it--that's what my arms and hands were doing! :)  I thought it was quite funny and kept laughing--even though it kinda hurt.  The doctor told me to calm down and just relax, but how can you do that when your body is totally twitching without you doing anything?  

Hum... so now it's time to do my legs. My feet were pretty easy, but when she got to the top of my legs, she kept shocking the wrong thing, and it would make my foot kick out. I almost hit her right in the face one time! And being the "mean Russian" she is...she kept telling me not to do it, each time she shocked me... but how could I not? She was the one doing it!!!    She kept telling me to relax my foot-- but honestly how can you relax something when somebody else is electrifying it to twitch?  "I mean really--what is the deal?"  

So next came the really not-so-fun part, but actually cool part.  She then went back over my body in about 15 places (even though she poked me like 50 times) and would put a needle/scope in my muscle to "listen" to it.  I swear, it was the weirdest thing ever.  I would probably compare it to an ultra-sound of the muscle.  So she would put the needle in against a muscle and then she would move the needle around, so that it would hit up against the muscle.  She would then have me flex it, and this weird "white noise" would come out.  It sounded like a bad-horror film.  It was really really strange. After doing this in like 15 different places--I was done.  After an 1.75 hours, I was totally over it.  The best part is that she said everything looks pretty good and it's not that bad! :) So yeah, for the twitching, yeah for the needles, and yeah for everything looking good!  I get my results at the end of the week, so I'll keep you posted. For now, I'll just continue to be steroid girl!  :)