Friday, March 02, 2007

No Surgery For Me!

Yee-haw!

I got the word this week that I *don't* have carpal tunnel. No explanation as of yet why my fingers/hands keep getting those annoying "sleep" tingles, but CT and nerve damage have been ruled out.

As someone who is joined with her keyboard at the fingertip, this was very good news.

The bad news, of course, was the test required to determine this fact. Something called a nerve connections test. Where I was hooked up to a bunch of wires and shocked with what felt like a cattle prod from wrist to shoulder as the neurologist watched the funny squiggly lines on the computer monitor go up and down.

At one point, my fingers spasmed in a particularly painful grip. I winced. He said, "There it is."

"What?" I squinted at the computer, hoping to see something that made sense.

"Your torture threshold."

Um, good to know.

After the cattle prod portion of the test, we moved on to the second part. Also known as the "poke her with sharp needles until she says ow" part. My doc said no, that wasn't accurate. "I won't stop even if you do say ow."

Everyone's a comedian. Except he wasn't. Day-um, that hurt!

When the nurse asked how I was doing after it was over, I told her I felt like a junkie with really bad aim. Needle marks in my palm, my wrist, my shoulder...

Anyway, no nerve damage, no carpal tunnel. I no longer have to wear wrist splints to bed every night (waaaaay sexy, lemme tell you!).

It's a happy thing. What good thing happened in your life this week?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear you're undamaged--other than what the docs did. ::rolls eyes:: I've been getting the oh-so-lovely finger tingles lately too. My Mama-san said, "Yep. That's carpal tunnel." Thanks, Mom. :P

Bought a second pair of "handeze" gloves so I'm never without them, even when they're in the wash. So classy--not. ;)

Kate Davies said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kate Davies said...

LOL! Well, I've had the finger tingles for over a year now, off and on (yes, I know. What kind of geek waits a year to check on something like that? Especially one who wants to make a living, oh, I dunno, WRITING), and it *wasn't* carpal tunnel, so I'll keep fingers crossed for you as well.

The doc prescribed physical therapy, but I couldn't talk him into a prescription for massage. Dagnabit.

Stacy~ said...

Well I'm glad it's not ct but I'd still be curious as to what it is - hopefully ct is the worse it could possibly be.

I think massage is a great treatment - dang doctor LOL