Does anyone else have severe hip girdle weakness and pain?

[RYO]

2 years ago I experienced severe flu like illness. During acute illness, my legs ached and felt cold. Within 1 week, I went from running 10-15 miles per week to not being able to stand long enough to take a shower. Now I can walk for short distances but every night I pound on my legs due to deep bone ache and burn. Pain worse around tendons. Muscles also twitch all night long. Anyone else with similar experience?

 

[Valentijn]

2 years ago I experienced severe flu like illness. During acute illness, my legs ached and felt cold. Within 1 week, I went from running 10-15 miles per week to not being able to stand long enough to take a shower. Now I can walk for short distances but every night I pound on my legs due to deep bone ache and burn. Pain worse around tendons. Muscles also twitch all night long. Anyone else with similar experience?

Yes, it sounds very familiar. Trouble standing can be orthostatic intolerance: low blood pressure, low pulse pressure, and/or tachycardia. The pains should diminish if you stop trying to walk too much. Muscle twitching can also result from pushing limits too much, but magnesium can help.

 

[lansbergen]

Pain worse around tendons.

Good of you to notice that. Now I have improved a lot I can detect that. Before it was all over my body

Try not to overdo.

 

[Hip]

@RYO
Can you more fully describe the hip girdle weakness you have.

I developed a weakness in my pelvic girdle following a viral infection. Specifically, this weakness feels as if the muscles and/or ligaments in my pelvic girdle have become a little slack or lacking in tautness, so that my whole pelvic area feels spongy and loose. Though there is no loss of muscular strength - the weakness is not due to reduced muscular strength, but seemingly because the muscles are lax in the pelvic area.

My hips will temporarily become a little firmer and tightened up after exercise (walking, or a short jog), but this is only a slight improvement, and it by no means fixes the situation.

I have describe this pelvic weakness on my website (which details the virus I caught) thusly:

"Another symptom that manifested at this 12 to 18 month stage was weak legs and a weak pelvic girdle. My pelvis-to-leg joints feel a little spongy and lacking in normal firmness. I suspect that the virus may be damaging the connective tissue in the ligaments of my pelvis, thus weakening the ligaments, and/or causing neuromuscular damage to the pelvic muscles. The result is a slightly less than sure walking gait, and a bit of a shuffling gait. This leg weakness and pelvic laxity is constant: it does not vary hour to hour, nor day to day. There is no loss of strength or spasm in the muscles either (except occasional cramps in my calf muscles). Differential diagnosis: in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), weak legs are a common symptom, but a variable one. In GAD the legs are fine one minute, and the next they suddenly get weak and can almost give way, due to nervous system fluctuations. But my case is not like GAD: my leg weakness is constant, never varied. And not that weak."

I have also speculated that my pelvic muscle weakness may be a manifestation of a mild case of polymyositis or dermatomyositis:

"Polymyositis or Dermatomyositis

This virus seems to have caused mild muscle weakness in the pelvic girdle and the upper legs (thighs) of several people including myself. The muscles in this area are known as the lower proximal muscles (the proximal muscles are those in the central portion of the body, the zone from shoulders to thighs). Now proximal muscle weakness is a characteristic of the diseases polymyositis and dermatomyositis, and these two chronic inflammatory myopathy diseases have been linked to group B coxsackieviruses (ref: 1), as well as parvovirus B19 infections, HIV and HTLV-I. Polymyositis and dermatomyositis generally affect the thighs and hips to begin with, but then progress to all the proximal muscles. However, those infected with this virus who developed this mild lower proximal muscle weakness have not had any further disease progression over the years, so if this is polymyositis or dermatomyositis, it is certainly a mild, benign and non-progressing form of this disease.

Dermatomyositis is characterized not only by proximal muscle weakness, but also by a heliotrope rash on the upper chest area just under the neck, corresponding to the area exposed in a V-neck jumper (the so-called V-sign), a symptom myself and several other people with this virus displayed. Thus along with my muscle weakness, my V-sign heliotrope rash tends to support the idea that the virus described on this website is causing something akin to a mild, benign version dermatomyositis.

Polymyositis and dermatomyositis are diseases in which T cells attack the muscle tissue (refs:1 2); in other words, these are autoimmune conditions, precipitated by viral infection."

 

[RYO]

I did experience autonomic dysfunction with initial illness but that is not an issue now. I wouldn't describe my weakness as spongy or slack. They feel like I just ran a half marathon or carried 100 lb backpack up a hill. Rheumatologist already ruled out polymyositis / dermatomyositis.

 

[Iquitos]

2 years ago I experienced severe flu like illness. During acute illness, my legs ached and felt cold. Within 1 week, I went from running 10-15 miles per week to not being able to stand long enough to take a shower. Now I can walk for short distances but every night I pound on my legs due to deep bone ache and burn. Pain worse around tendons. Muscles also twitch all night long. Anyone else with similar experience?

Yes, I do. I feel this is part of vagus nerve infection that, for me, focuses on the sacroiliac area spinal nerves and lower. I've had a back injury to this part and the vagus nerve infection theory indicates an infection can begin where there is a previous injury.

My pain is pretty constant even if I don't do much. It can get worse from overdoing it but even after a 3-day lay around, my hip joints still hurt if I, for instance, turn over in bed without being really careful or forget while standing and try to pivot on a hip joint.

I do shuffle and lifting my right leg to put my foot into a pants leg, sock or underwear, or to get into my vehicle -- all exacerbate the pain. If I do overdo it, I then get muscle spasms in my buttocks, legs and especially my feet, when I finally get horizontal. The worst part of this is that I can no longer spread my legs (as in sex) without a lot of pain in my hip joints. For years it was only on the right side but last year it began in the left as well and has progressed quickly.