Question: hello. i have had ankles and ffeet swelling the last few days and i have begun to have tremors (shaking) mainly in my hands but can feel it throughout my body. I am 52 yrs old. female white with prior high blood pressure. Take enalapril maleate 20 mg. and have to be honest, don't take everyday. I have also experienced weight gain recently. I am under a great deal of stress as I am currently a full time student. I think I have also started the menopause period in my life. I can feel my heart pounding more than ever before. I'm beginning to get worried. My partner says I have sleep apnea and he awakes alot to me gasping for air, but I don't have good ins. just medi-cal and so far they have yet to do anything about that. Any suggestions? Also a smoker, but getting ready to stop finally. Used to be very active but school has kept me sitting behind a computer way more than I'd like to so I don't get the exercise that I probably need.,.. XXXXXXX

hello, thank you for responding. No, I do not know why my ankles and feet are swelling but it has been happening for the past 3 days, I notice it in the afternoon-evening and it looks pretty bad. I almost lose definition of my leg to ankle. I had a blockage in my kidney in 2004 which became infected and I ended up having kidney surgery to remove the blockage. No problems since then with the kidney. I also in 2005 had my intestines rupture in the middle of the night and subsequently had surgery to remove 18' of my intestines, appendectomy and one ovary removed also at that time, I believe that was because the ER doctor told me to go home and do an enema because I was constipated and so the rupture wasn't discovered for almost 20 hours. I thought I was done for at that time but pulled through. The tremors are most noticeable in my hands. I see people looking at me kind of alarmed like. It's embarrassing. I had an emotional thing happen to me about 3 weeks ago and I noticed during the peak of that that I was shaking very badly. Since then I have noticed that I still shook but not as bad as that night. I seem to shake less late at night before bed than I do all day long. Some of the movements are large enough that I spill drinks a little. Most of the time however they are small but I feel them inside me, through out my body. No one in my family that I know of has ever had these.
As far as smoking goes, I have smoked for almost 40 years. I did quit once for 5 years but started again in 2010. I don't have a cough yet. I do feel it getting tighter in my chest though.
Another possible link (maybe) is for the past 2 weeks I have had a lot of pain in my neck and shoulder area. I thought it was my bed possibly but don't know that for sure. I know that I didn't injure myself.
As far as the sleep apnea thing, I don't ever wake up gasping. I wouldn't even know that I had a problem except for my partner telling me that he wakes up to me not breathing and then suddenly gasping for air. I never wake up though. I do feel tired a lot. Never wake up feeling refreshed.
I hope that information helps some.