Spent most of the day seeking medical care for my back / neck / arm issue. No solutions yet but we are making progress.
Last week my sports med doc suggested I should consult my orthopedic surgeon. And then after a really difficult episode on our trip, when I had excruciating pain and couldn’t even straighten out enough to get into bed, I
called him. He suggested some short term meds and said I should come in.
Yesterday my symptoms got worse—the hand weakness I had last year returned. I’m having trouble open doors,
picking stuff up and, worst of all, playing my trumpet.
Today I saw him and he did some tests that revealed the weakness. He said I should have an immediate MRI of my spine. The MRI didn’t show anything likely to be causing the nerve pain and muscle spasms in my back, or the shooting or burning pains down my arm and under my arm or the weakness in my right hand.
That surprised my surgeon but he thought a lot about the symptoms—and my report that things strarted with pain in my elbow–and came up with a possible diagnosis and plan. The diagnosis is ulnar nerve entrapment, most likely in my elbow, but possibly in other places as well (but not at the spine.)
So I’m going to have an EMG test next week my arm. And hopefullly that test will find out the source of the entrapment. And then I can get it fixed. (If it’s the elbow there is a fairly simple procedure that can fix it.)
The thing we can’t quite understand is how a problem in my elbow could set off my back spasms, but nerves do run both ways so maybe that’s the reason. At any rate, I have to get the hand weakness solved first. The back spasms. seems to be getting a little better and I can manage that while I figure the rest out.