United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

I had my accident 2 months ago and have been told by my specialist that the pain should subside within 12 months. Is this accurate?

sorry to hear you joined our club. my accident occured on may 21/99. unfortunatly i still have the same pain, even after an unsuccessfull D.R.E.Z. procedure. i guess you just have to learn to deal with it.so far no meds have worked for me. good luck.

Hi Zoe..........I was injured 10/99. I still have the pain. Just being truthful here. Meds are temporary, so I quit them bout a year ago, as I felt they were not worth the risk. I sincerely hope your pain does go away in 12 months.......or even sooner. But just be aware that most, if not all, of the people with this injury still carry a measurable amount of pain. Another truth is that sometimes other muscles, as they're called upon to take over new functions, get sore and can cause pain also. Seems par for the course with this injury.

What helps me most is occassional aspirin and staying busy to keep my mind off of it. Sounds simple......but it works. Don't give up. By default we all find a way to cope. Good luck with your healing !

George

Hi Zoe

I agree with George; staying busy is one of the best ways to conquer this pain...and there are no nasty side effects! People have found many ways of coping with the pain and reducing it. I took varying sized doses of ametriptylene for years, and in truth, it did help me sleep, but after 8 years of it I couldn't tolerate the side effects any more. Since I gave it up, my pain levels have gone down a lot, and I wish now that I had come off them years before or never started on them at all. Everyone is very different though, and each one of us finds ways to deal with it.

There is a very good article about central pain with a BPI on the tbpi-group.org website; the link for that is http://tbpiukgroup.homestead.com/centralpainbpi.html

I hope you find relief from it soon; all of us understand what you are going through...good luck; as George said, we all find a a way to cope :0)

Take care...

Liz

I have to chime in with everyone else on the distraction theme. My accident was October 1991. They pain is still intense. You just learn ways to get around it. The way I look at it is, I had two ways to go 1) let the pain consume me (which there are still days it does); OR 2) adjust. By adjusting I learned distractions. My biggest distraction is Genealogy. There is always a mystery, there is always something that needs to be done, there are always mistakes to fix and it is not physical. As a matter of fact last night was a bad night for pain. I was up until 5 this morning searching for long lost relatives.

If there are any other tricks you would like to hear about let us know. We all have many.

Joy

Hi Zoe, see my reply to your question re amputation which may partly answer this question as well.

Hi Zoe

Sorry to hear about your accident. As the others said, the pain varies for everyone. I found it quite excruciating for the first year, but then my docs here don't seem to know what a tbpi is, so when i got tired of all the thumb guessing, I decided to do my own thing. The strongest pain killer I was put on was myprodol [which you need to take with 2 senekot as it clogs you up]. I agree you need some distraction, but sometimes that doesn't help so early on in the injury. I believe in glistening to your body & if ya wanna shout out coz the pain is bad, then do it.

All the best & I found this site 5 years post my tbpi, up until then I didn't quite know what was wrong with me, but these people are fantastic and their advise is excellent.

Hang in there

Ali

Hard to tell. I was finally pain free after 3.5 years. It was a gradual thing. Once everything settled down the pain dropped off. I'm not sure if this is more due to me getting used to it than anything else. Still I must say it has dropped off alot since surgery and recovery.

Mikey

Many thanks to you all. Someone, and i can't remember who, had said they ask their body if the pain it's inflicting is the best it can do? I'm also trying this now and it works. Doesn't get rid of the pain but by jove it helps.

I do look a little strange if i get a spasm and i'm stood there going "come on then hurt me, is that it? you useless peice of s***. just lay there doin nowt but causing pain, come on then, make me cry" etc etc it really is effective.

Great attitude Zoe, just keep fighting it, I wish I could. My accident was in Feb 99 & I still have pain, but what other peeps have said is keep busy & it does work. Goodluck.
bigsel
Scottish tbpi.