Following the sudden and unexpected death of my husband, I began experiencing twitches or possibly tics that progressed into excruciatingly painful convulsive involuntary muscle contractions, intractable spasms and cramps that felt like my legs were being crushed in a car door. I was sleeping less than 2 hours out of every 24. I would come home from work lay down and pass out from exhaustion. Within 2 hours I would wake in screaming pain and try to walk it off. Every time I lay back down the pain would start up again. After 6 hours of this, it was time to go back to work. I received many conflicting diagnoses and recommendations. One doctor wanted to sever my vertebrae from C2 to T1, a surgery that would have taken over 12 hours and with my COPD and heart condition would probably have killed me. I was subjected to many neurological tortures including the dreaded EMG. If the Spanish Inquisition had the EMG, the whole world would be Catholic today. I sought eight second opinions and finally found a neurologist that prescribed Clonazepam/Klonopin 0.5 MG BID. It worked, immediately; I could finally sleep through the night again. After 5 year on the same dose, I’m becoming tolerant of Klonopin and the twitching has begun again. My current docs are reluctant to up the dose as it’s addictive and harmful to the liver and kidneys especially taken long-term. I’m still not considering the surgery.
