I posted most of this over on the men with lupus place, but I've edited it a bit for this particular post. I'm a 52 year old physically active man.
After eight years of various nerve entrapment surgeries, unexplained falls, chiropractor visits for "pinched nerves," and living with unexplained chronic pain that seemed to come and go from no where, etc., I was recently diagnosed with CNS lupus.
Apparently it has been attacking my peripheral nerves for quite a while, often causing a strange stroke-like gait or a foot drop that causes me to fall (but only during flares). I was a runner/cyclist and always attributed the bouts to over training, pulled muscles, pinched nerves, etc.
I've been having these flare ups for the past 8 years or so, and they've usually gone away on their own or after the nerve surgeries I didn't need (apparently because they gave me steroids to help heal without scar tissue).
This particular flare up started five months ago and by the time I got a diagnosis, I was just about in a walker. At any rate, I've been on prednisone and hydrochlorquinine for about a month, and I seem to be improving. Today, I was able to walk a three mile loop slowly. When not flaring, I walked my labs five miles every morning at just about a jogging pace. What long strange trip it's been.
I would also have these strange bouts of irrational behavior and thoughts right before the onset of the peripheral nerve problems. An example being that I have been a motorcyclist since I was eleven years old, and I have ALWAYS had a motorcycle in my life since then. Last spring, I suddenly decided that motorcycles were dangerous, so I sold my three bikes and bought a new stove...crazy...by July, I was back to normal and couldn't for the life of me figure out why in the heck I had sold the bikes, so I bought another one. Looking back over the past eight years, I can see other times when I had strange unexplained reactions to things and sometimes downright self-destructive behaviors.
I sure hope this med thing straightens me out. It's been wild.