36yr old male, partner and 2 young daughters, working in the City as a Finance Director.
Symptoms began in the middle of August, I was at work and experienced a twitch in my right hand while using a mouse that lasted for about 60 seconds. I had previously suffered a shoulder injury several years ago and put it down to that it was playing up and it must be a pinched nerve.
A week later while walking home I had another twitch in the hand but this time it was followed by my right leg also going numb, to the point where I had to stop and stand still for another couple of minutes before the feeling returned and I could carry on walking.
The next day I called the GP as the arm and leg symptoms warranted a check as they shouldn’t be linked. The doctor sent me off to AE for possible mini strokes, I went in Friday before a bank holiday and had to wait till Tuesday on a ward before being able to have any further scans. At this point as a family we went through a complete range of possible conditions as you do while waiting for a diagnosis, to the point where my mother was convinced it was going to be MS! (Google is sometimes not helpful).
Finally, after a week in hospital and numerous CT, MRI (I didn’t find the MRI’s that bad, I just shut my eyes and therefore found it a lot easier to block out the claustrophobia feeling) and ultrasounds and a specialist opinion from Kings College I was given the news that I had a frontal lobe low-grade glioma in my left motor cortex. The twitching/numbness was seizures caused by the tumour that at this point was about 2cm in size.
I was put on 1000mg daily dose of Keppra to control the seizures, discharged with no further support or information and that Kings would be in touch by the end of September for a review.
To say we were in total shock wouldn’t do the emotions justice, I had gone from a young fit individual (I’d barely even had a day off work in the past 15years, had a resting heart rate of 65 and blood pressure of 120/80) the closest thing I came to being ill was hay fever! To now having a potentially terminal condition and left in limbo “to just get on with it.”
