Ping Pong

I'm a ping pong ball (or table tennis if you prefer). I went about a year and a half ago to visit a neurologist about my hands going numb and basic pain in my wrist and hand. He told me then that I had mild carpal tunnel and that most of my issues were vascular in nature. I finally got off my duff recently and visited Kaiser for a referral to a Vascular doctor and had my appointment yesterday. After a few tests (listening to my arteries and such while my hands are in certain positions) he determined that I'm not likely to have had any problems that he can fix. He did send me to the lab for another test to confirm, though. They hooked me up to an ultrasound device which monitored my heart beat and blood flow while I did various poses. It confirmed the doctor's diagnosis. So, they're sending me to a new neurologist to get retested.

Sigh. If it didn't bug me, I wouldn't worry about it, but I'd like to know what it is and what I can do about it. I just don't care for being a ping pong ball going between specialists.

Neurologists and Carpal Tunnel

I visited the neurologist's office yesterday to confirm that I had carpal tunnel in my right hand/wrist. He had the response times measured in my nerves going from my shoulder to my wrist, my elbow to my wrist, and just around my wrist. This involved putting sensors on my hand and then putting an instrument at various points on the main nerve and then shooting a bit of electricity into me to see how fast it travels. It is rather painful (not horribly so, but uncomfortable anyway) and also disturbing to watch my hand jerk and twitch when I didn't tell it to.

After about 30 minutes of this, the doctor checked the results out. I came out with only a mild abnormality result. So, they took it to the next step. A needle to "listen" to the nerves in my muscles to see what sort of responses they'd get. This part I REALLY didn't like. They took a small needle and poked my arm at various points (shoulder, elbow, wrist, hand) making me flex the area in question. The hard part came when she rotated the needle around the area (in search of the nerves and such) while the muscle was flexed. This flat out hurt and left bruises on my hand. Ugh.

End result. I have carpal tunnel but not severely enough for surgery (yet). I suppose this is a good thing, but the testing really bites.