Loss Of Balance And Weakness

My mother was diagnosed with mutiple myeloma 4 years ago. After treatment with Thalidomide and an autologous stem cell transplant last July, she was finally declared to be in remission two months ago....However, in the two months since, she has suddenly lost her ability to walk straight, falls about 2-3 times a week, and is so weak that it takes her over 3 minutes to pull herself out of a chair. She also cannot put on her own shoes and socks anymore. She claims she has no dizziness, but loses her balance very easily....Does anyone have any ideas of what this might be? Her MRI and CatScan showed no clues.

Cheeky,I am not a doctor but have had the same symptoms as you describe. In my case the cause of dizziness and falling are attributed to:

1. Low blood sugar. I am not a diabetic.

2. Very possibly the diet could be causeing the falls due to lack of energy, too low calorie count.

3. Since I have also had this problem, a stroke or TIA event can cause the neuromuscular system to dysfunction and create the same type of symptoms: dizziness, falling over, slurring of words, forgetfullness, weakness on one side of the body etc.

Best recourse, continue to have your mother examined by the primary care doctor and look for the obvious then look for the more involved problems. Check the diet, blood sugar etc first, the problem maybe totally disassociated with the cancer therapy.

My mom actually had a stroke several months before the loss of balance. It's something to think about. Thank you for bringing that up.

What is a TIA event?

As explained to me a TIA in pure layman's terms is a mini-stroke.

Jack