An Unsure Diagnosis

For the past six months Doug has been dealing with a tremor in his right arm.  It wasn't noticeable at first, but has become more so over time.  Although we both felt that it was related to the stress that he was under at work, we thought that it was best that Doug have it evaluated by our family doctor.  Dr. Freeze met with him, reviewed his symptoms and ran some bloodwork.  It took awhile to get the bloodwork back due to a confusion with BRCA 1 testing, but once it returned it didn't show much of anything.  The next step was for Doug to undergo an MRI of the brain.  It was an extremely uncomfortable test as he had to have his head bolted to a table with a hockey mask covering his face.  He survived the unpleasantness of it and thankfully, was told that he had a very healthy brain.

Our last stop in the journey to diagnosis his tremor led us to the neurologist this afternoon.  We left her office feeling very unsure.  She spent an hour with us, but within a minute of meeting Doug, she had already come up with her diagnosis.  Since the testing was all subjective - observation and some motor movement evaluations - we just weren't quite convinced that her diagnosis was correct.  Some of what she was seeing were items that Doug had always dealt with, most notably dexterity issues in his hand (interestingly enough it was observed in the left hand, not the shaking one).  Once we mentioned this, she agreed that she doesn't really know Doug and that she could be wrong.  She really wanted him to try some medication that she felt would answer the question for us.  We weren't as excited about that as it was a strong medication with some severe side effects.  Doug set up an appointment for three months from now to reevaluate where he was at and to see if his tremor had progressed or slowed down.

After a lot of discussion last night between Doug and I, we thought that it was best to research more about what we felt originally caused the tremor - stress.  I realized almost immediately that there was tons of information about shaking caused by outside anxiety.  It talked about the tension that muscles feel when a person is under a lot of stress and how those muscles have to get rid of the extra adrenaline somehow.  For most people that results in shaking.  There were different relaxation techniques and tips on how to manage the tremor that we thought Doug might be able to try.  It was the one avenue that neither Dr. Freeze or the neurologist had explored.  We figured that it wouldn't hurt to try, especially since his shakiness always seemed to show up in stressful situations and relaxed when the stress reduced.  We don't know if we are correct, but figured that our observations might be more reliable right now since we were the ones seeing the tremor daily.  Either way, we figured that it wouldn't hurt to try the relaxation techniques.  This has been one of the most stressful times in Doug's career.  Even if it doesn't solve the problem, it may relieve some of that.