RFI: My hands have gone stupid

Anyway, I have a doctor's appointment for Friday. It's with a GP and I expect to get referred elsewhere. Here's the deal:

* For as long as I can remember -- at least since early teens -- my hands have been shaky. I don't mean problems with coordination, as such -- I mean that people have always said "hey, what's wrong, your hands are shaking," and it wasn't nervousness or anything, it was just ... my hands shake. Just a little, but frequently. There is a name for at least one condition that causes this, but I don't remember it; a friend I'm no longer in touch with to ask had it, and took pills for it in the mornings, and her hands didn't shake anymore. I always figured it wasn't worth the bother. What's a little shakiness? It's not like I was performing surgery.

* From time to time, I'd have a "spell" when my hands were worse. Just sort of ... muffled dexterity, like when you're drunk or feverish. A poor omen for my juggling career.

* In the last year, and especially the last few months, those spells have become more common and much more severe.

* What has changed in the last year:

(1) I'm on daily medication for chronic migraines. But they're just beta blockers, and I wouldn't think they would exacerbate this. The Imitrex which I take less frequently -- for the migraines that shove their way through the beta blockers -- definitely does make my hands shut down, and the migraines themselves used to do so sometimes. But that seemed to be part of a more general inability to function. (My migraines, before I started the beta blockers, were severe and just shy of incapacitating; I have talked about them far past the point of spamminess before, there's no need to do so again.)

(2) I sprained my hand or wrist or something this summer and didn't see anyone about it, because I didn't have insurance. Nothing was broken, and I iced it and splinted it and went through a lot of Icy Hot (a mentholated topical analgesic). But it is perhaps not coincidental, the timing. This week, I'm trying to pay attention to my left (uninjured) hand to see if it's as bad off as the right hand is.

* What's actually happening vis-a-vis my hands:

(1) I have cut or burned myself more times this year, in the course of cooking, than in all previous years combined. Frequently enough that I've pretty much always had a cut "in progress," if you see what I mean, one or another not yet healed to invisibility. At the moment I have a long scar on my finger from, um, dropping the knife and catching it by the blade.

(2) I often "forget" how to open doors and jars, and how to turn faucets. It's like ... telling my hand to turn, but it won't do so.

(3) I drop things a lot. Every day. Sometimes it's like when your leg is asleep and you start walking and it feels funny, only without the tingling; sometimes I just think I have ahold of something, but then it slips, or my fingers don't come together in a grip. We've lost a lot of plates, poor things.

(4) Sometimes my hands just "feel funny," like I'm wearing oven mitts, and although they do what I tell them, it feels like their motions are not as smooth or accurate as nature intended.

(5) I can type fine. I don't notice any change in my typing at all. This is perplexing. Mouse use and touchpad use, definitely affected. Typing, perfectly okay.

So that was lengthy and all, but I couldn't think of a quick way to explain it/sum it up. What I wanted to ask was: has anyone had any experience with something like this, first- or secondhand (so to speak)? It's very frustrating, almost humiliating, to drop things all the time, or hover in front of a door waiting for my hand to remember how to turn the knob, or to have to ask people to dice peppers because I'm not positive I won't cut my finger open again. It seems silly to whine about, which is why I've put off doing anything about it for so long, but for all I know it's part of some other thing that'll get worse over time.