United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

I am wondering if anyone knows about the difficulties people have faced down the road after living with a bpi. Specifically, overuse of my functioning arm? Will I require surgery 10-20 years from now because of overuse of my other arm? Thank you

Hi Sela!
I'm 23 yrs post bpi, I have no functional use of my right arm so have depended on just my left, non dominant arm since the accident. I have a very active life. The first time I noticed overuse symptoms was when my 3rd child was around a year and I was 41, 20 yrs post injury. My 'good' shoulder started crunching horribly and my back, shoulders and neck started aching severely. Some days I was not able to turn my head either way, I just had to stare straight ahead, makes for a dull life....
I had already found these boards by that time so was aware of the risk of overuse. I do not ever want to be drug dependent-hell, I'm (relatively) young and I figure drugs just deal with the pain, they don't cure anything, I intend to live for a few more decades so now is not the time to start a long term pain pill habit. I wanted to get at the cause rather than treat the symptoms so I stopped doing the obviously damaging things, like picking up my big chubby baby and carrying washing etc. This has made all the difference and I rarely have bad overuse pain these days. I rarely lift anything heavier than a bag of sugar now, it's just not worth it. If I do have to lift something, I lift it in such a way that I can carry the weight on my body rather than with the arm. I also found that since emigrating and having a far more physically active lifestyle, I get overuse far less often and it heals itself much more quickly, so keeping fit as an everyday thing rather than a weekly gym visit is definitely helpful, especially as you age. Horse riding has helped a lot, it improved my posture and increased my good arm strength massively, but not in a way that put a strain on the joints and ligaments. Funnily enough my scapula on the bpi side is killing me tonight, I was silly and did a backflip on the trampoline....
I am in touch with tbpi even longer term than me who also by and large do not have serious overuse issues despite quite heavy jobs and active lifestyles. I sometimes wonder if it's because the pain of the strained shoulder/back/neck is so minor in comparison to the neural pain that we disregard it, or can live with it...we can't feel one another's pain so I don't know! You can't guard against overuse really, an underused joint is likely to cause as much trouble in the future as an overused one, but I would say maybe avoid obvious triggers such as arm wrestling and backflips on trampolines :0)
TBPI notto has to be-if it hurts-stop it!