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Well I'll try to keep this short as it's a VERY long story.
When I was born there were some complications, such as having the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck, arm, leg, neck again (lol) so tight that it asphyxiated me and my heart stopped beating. They revived me using defribullators (can't spell) but I was a very poorly baby and had to be in an incubator and so on. I was not premature and I was a rather chubby baby so I was obviously fairly healthy up until this point. A few days later they released me and my parents took me home, but that night I didn't wake up to feed and when my mum got worried she tried to wake me up but it wouldn't work. I stayed in a coma for ten days after this, which the doctors attributed to my brain shutting down to try to recover from the trauma during my birth.
Over the following few years I developed very slowly. I was several months behind other children in learning to talk, walk etc. My parents had to wake me up to feed me because I would sleep A LOT (and still do!! lol) and they would have to feed me like a baby bird, rubbing my neck to make me swallow. I had physiotherapy basically from when I was a baby right up until I was 18. My feet turned inwards so I often tripped over, altho thankfully now they don't. Generally my muscle tone has always been poor and I am constantly getting colds, sickness bugs and so on, although I do not have a poor immune system.
When I was about 5 I noticed that I couldn't get the fingers of my left hand together, like in a 'stop' kind of sign. My little finger and ring finger didn't seem to be in my control, although I could bend them and so on as normal. This lead to me noticing my fingers would move of my own accord. By the age of 10 my entire body had a muscle tremor, which obviously made me very very self-conscious. Although it is difficult to see my tremor oridinarily, unless you are looking for it, i was constantly aware of it until fairly recently. Obviously this made it awkward for me as a teenager in terms of dating but also things like giving presentations at school. My tremor gets worse when i am stressed, nervous, excited or particularly tired so obviously the most stressful things are made more stressful by my tremor. It also effects the muscles round my mouth so it makes it difficult to get my mouth round my words sometimes.
When i was about 11 I had a full blown seizure. I was tested for diabetes, given brain scans to look for epilepsy but all my tests came back normal. I continued to have small seizures where i would become dizzy, feel sick and like my blood was literally boiling in my body. I would have what i called 'weird feelings' in my head which i can only describe as someone having their hands in my head and squeezing my brain, and then other times it would feel like the fluid around my brain was moving around. This obviously freaked me out and I would often have panic attacks and hyperventilate. This was really really traumatic for me.
I have always been extremely tired. The way i describe it to people is that the way they feel after a really long, busy day at work is how I feel when i wake up. So you can imagine how I feel when I've been to work or university. Having my period was awful as a teenager, i would be incapable of getting out of bed for 3 or 4 days. I prayed it would come on during the weekend so i wouldn't miss school, but usually i would only make it in for 4 days a week anyway due to tiredness. At 16 i was put on the pill and since then it has settled down, although i am still more tired at this time of the month.
I have had countless blood tests, to look for brain damage of the basal ganglius (which is what i have been diagnosed with several times, but apparently i do not have the anti-bodies which would be present if i had it), and to look at my DNA for a genetic disease which apparently only affects people with jewish blood - im not jewish so it isnt surprising i didn't have it. lol. I have had several brain scans to look for different things, including brain tumors, but they have apparently come back totally normal. I have had ECG scans (where they put the little wires on your head and then look at your brain waves) but these have apparently been normal too. I even had an EMG which is possibly the most horrible test ever. It involves giving a person electrical shocks in their muscles and along the nerves to check for nerve damage/problems. Basically, if it hurts like you're going to die, your nerves are fine! This, too, came back normal. I'm sure I've been tested for other things but don't remember them all. One doctor thought I had mad cow disease but I definately don't. I have been told I have cerebral palsy but this was by a GP, not by the neurology specialists i have seen so i think she actually meant i have many of the symptoms of cerebral palsy, which is what is written in my medical notes. I have been told that I have the symptoms of parkinsons but im not old enough to have it, they also put me on a drug called L'dopa which is for parkinsons but this didn't make me better, it made me critically ill so i had to come off it after a week.
So yeah, that's really the very basic stuff but you get the idea. Does anyone have any clue as to what i might have???
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