My name is Elizabeth. For the last 20 months, I have been looking for answers!

A brief run down.....

I have had 25 years of back problems, including 2 surgeries, a laminectomy 1982, & another to take the scar tissue away from the spinal cord. ( during that surgery, my spinal fluid canal was nicked & had to be drained for 3 days as well as having to be kept with my bed elevated to get the fluids back to my brain?) My surgeon explained what happened & said there would never be any more surgery done again. Fair enough, I don't have a problem with that. This was in 1992. From this day on, when I went back to work, the pain level kept increasing. I probably noticed the tremors starting about 5 years later.

Until last May 2000, I worked in a bookstore for 15 years. Heavy lifting of books, constant bending & lifting, aprox 10 to 12 hours a day on my feet. (if I sat down I couldn't get up again for a couple of hours) Pain was a constant.....In trying to relieve the pain when standing for long periods, I wore an elasticized brace, but I feel in doing so , my thoracic area took the brunt. Consequently, when I lifted a tray of food at a cafe, my thoracic T7 & T8 went kafluie. I have been on so many different drugs, some that have scared me silly...a lot anti-depressants, for the pain you know! The silly thing is, that now that I haven' t been working for nearly two years, I don't have the pain.....but I still have those wretched tremors!

My tremors have increased to the point of having to use crutches when I go out. I have been using them since last Xmas just to keep on my feet & keep walking, because when one stops, the legs literally lock from the sheer strain of trying to keep upright. The tremors are so bad at times, I sweat,(pardon the terminology, but I am past putting things politely) so badly & my body temperature raises to such a point that I must look as though I'm going to explode. To date, no-one will give me a name much less even understand what it is that is happening to me. My local GP is great & has probably got the reasoning right, but not a name.I have been to numerous other medical people etc, but it is still in my "brain" you know! "you can do it if you try. Tell your feet to do it!" & so on....I am really no further ahead with a diagnosis than I was until I read your piece on OT.

I live in New Zealand & because this is being treated through a work- related causative, I have had to go through "the Process". Stress does not help, that's a given, but understanding would go a long way I feel. Reading some of the first pieces of information I read, is like looking at my life at the moment. I don't have a good concentration level at the moment , so I haven't read it all, but enough to see that this is what I appear to have.

Thank you for the chance at least to see that it isn't "just in my head!". Frustration can lead to depression etc...

UPDATE 12/20/02

Hi Gloria Thank you for your email and all the support that you have given me. I got back from Wellington today and wanted to let you know what the results were! I definitely have OT! Dr Mossman did extensive tests with me as I was a self diagnosis and he had to start from scratch. He is Neurologist and has rooms in the Hutt Valley and does his stint at the teaching hospital in Wellington. He was so excited!

The more he tested me the more excited he became! Before I had the EMG, I asked him what he thought. He said that he was certain that it was OT and it would be confirmed with the EMG. He came along to the room with me and couldn't tear himself away until he had seen the first startling results. He said that they had never had such a clear picture before and the recordings were that the tremors in my leg was 18 per second and the normal is 9. Then they did my arm while I stood and extended my arm out from my side. Again it was nearly twice the normal tremor.He had the student doctors around and in and out of his office... Dr Mossman was so tickled to think that we got an accurate diagnosis from your site. He was fascinated and told the story again and again as to what it took for me to get someone to see me in NZ .

He was horrified at some of the responses I had from the medical fraternity and was every angry on my behalf. So you can chalk one up to yourself and give yourself a big pat on the back. If I were there, I would give you a big hug and a kiss! Thank you again. He has put me onto new meds and we will see how they work out. To date nothing has worked except to make me so blah, that I didn't know one day from another! we shall see!

Elizabeth - Taupo, New Zealand e-mail : redmomma@clear.net.nz