United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

that I am suffering from Myofascial Pain Syndrome. Geez. I don't buy it and neither does my PT. So why is there pain in the first place? Plus, I spoke with him Friday afternoon when I had to go home because I had a pain attack of the shoulders and neck, and I am irritated. I had been talking with the specialist who is going to do the test on the Long Thoracic Nerve Monday, and I wanted them to test the Medial, Radial and Ulnar nerves as well. They said to call the referring doc to get this on the list. So that is when I spoke with him and he said that these nerves had already been tested and they were fine. FINE?!?!?! So why do I have these arm problems I ask? He says, "We don't know". I'm a bit disgusted.

Okay, the question to you all is this,
If he tested BELOW the injury, will it show the nerve to be conducting properly? If the damage is at the root area, where it comes right off the spinal column, in several of the cords, this would cause the winging scapula and the cords that are giving me the lack of strength in the arm. This sound reasonable? Because when he did the test he did not go as high as the neck area to test conduction.
Wendy

I hope this helps but I am not sure if it will.....my husband has BP, thoracic, alner, medial, carpal and others damaged all showing on the EMG. Even from the wrist his was slowed down and the closer to the spinal cord the slower it became. So with him even not starting and the spinal cord it still had positive results.
We were told that it was unusual to damage the amount of nerves at one time like he did.
To answer your question about damage at the spinal cord....none of Matt's damage starts at the spinal cord and he has scapula winging and major muscle loss in his left arm. His nerves are all stretched most start at the shoulder blade level.

I hope I was at least a little helpful.

May I suggest if the DR is not satisfying you find another! We were told by a DR that if you find no results to your questions, then find someone new, this injury is far to complex to deal with people without a clue...

Best of luck
Beth

Well thank you Beth for your insight. Okay, so it appears I need to find another neurologist. I refuse to deal with one that has no freakin' clue when there is obviously something wrong.I will talk to the atty's office on Monday and see who they recommend. Specially with something I discovered last night. I'll post about it, see what you think.

Thanks Beth.

Wendy, If you haven't already I would strongly encourage you to see a BP specialist. There are listings for Dr's if you click at the top of the page under resources.
We were fortunate in that when Dustin was injured his neurosurgeon stated striaght up that he didn't have the knowledge in this area to preform surgery. The BP is a very specialized area. I'm not sure where you are located in IL but we are in WI and travel to Mayo in MN. Dustin has also seen the BP therapist at Froedert in Milwaukee. There are also dr's there but we haven't seen them.
Sue

The closest BP docs are about a 100 miles away in St Louis. Not too far and doable. I'm going to have to talk with my ortho doctor about this neurologist first, plus we shall see what the EMG guy has to say tomorrow. I plan on discussing this arm problem with him and show him the evaluation from my PT. It has in it the write up of the arm problems as well. It is possible that much of the arm issues are coming from the whiplash and that everything will come back, but still, the neuro guy first said brachial plexus problem and then switched to focus on the winging scap. I really get ticked when this happens. Doing a flip flop on me.
Wendy