Now What!?!

The hand is twitching now.  I'm on my second day of being on the full dose (3X a day) of Gabapentin.  I haven't had much relief of my nerve pain yet, but I just started the medicine so that doesn't surprise me.  It does make me feel loopy, dizzy, very talkative, and almost a little ADD.

But just today if I relax my hand, let it go limp, the fingers on my right hand start twitching.  There is a tingling in my arm and fingers first and then they start moving.  But I'm not moving them!  I don't like it!  The thumb is the most active one.  I haven't yet seen my left hand do it.  And recently I've taken to letting my hands go limp at rest a lot since it hurts so much to move them, so there's a lot of twitching going on.

I have no idea if this is just a new symptom or one of those bad side effects from the Gabapentin.  Being home alone with no one else to ask for advice, I called the pharmacy and asked him if finger twitching was a common or acceptable side effect for Gabapentin.  He told me to call my doctor right away and he'll probably want me taken off it.

Okay, so I called and left a message.  Hopefully he'll get back to me before the weekend?  UGH.  *twitch twitch*

EDIT:

I got a call back from Dr. K.  He told me to back off the Gabapentin to twice a day, just in case I am having some atypical reaction to it.  He has never heard of this type of side effect since Gabapentin in a nerve suppressant and if anything would be given to stop twitches like these.  He did say that these twitches could be caused by RSD or Scleroderma. 

If the twitching doesn't stop or gets worse at 2X a day, he wants me to stop all together and see if the twitching sticks around.

I told him when my tests were scheduled for and he was not happy about the long wait.  He said he was going to try to do something about that--to get my tests moved up because he doesn't want me waiting that long.  I'm supposed to hear back by the end of next week if they have rescheduled my tests.

He did give me the results to my xrays and bloodwork.  Everything was negative other than the ANA.  The ANA is still positive but not skyrocketing like the first time. I think he said it was the same as my second test.


The good news about my test results.

• Besides having an elevated ANA, my blood is totally honky dory.  I mean, they tested for a lot of stuff and the fact that only the ANA came up is pretty cool. 
• The normal chest xray means that I don't have horrifically obvious sclerosis in my lungs.  Hooray!
• The normal hand xray means that my finger is not broken and my bones are not deteriorating.  Hooray again!

The bad news about my test results.

• The bloodwork doesn't tell us anything new.  Although Dr. K did remind me that in order to have Scleroderma, you don't need to test positive for the Scl-70 antibody to have it.  You only need a positive ANA count which I do have.  I really wish he'd stop reminding me.
• The bad thing about having a normal hand xray is that if I had RSD for as long as I have, my bones should show mottling on an xray, and they don't.  Dr. K says this sort of lowers the possibility of Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy.  Which is good only in the light that I don't want to have RSD, but I would happily take RSD over Scleroderma.

Time to wait some more.