And Almost One Year Later....

    One of the reasons I started a blog was for journaling purposes. Many others have done this and I fought it for a long time.  Then last February, things changed.  I had started jogging with my two youngest in the jogging stroller again and soon after my fingers went all tingly and numb.  I called a doctor friend who reassured me (the only thing I knew of with tingly fingers was a stroke, so he ruled that out--lol)  that it was probably carpel tunnel.  I made an appointment to see my doc, but it was going to be about a week before they could get me in. The pain move all the way up my arm and into my shoulder.  It throbbed all night, so I wasn't getting any sleep.  I broke down at the grocery store when I couldn't even push the shopping cart. I called the nurse in tears who got me a wrist splint which helped immediately. 
    My first diagnosis was carpel tunnel and they gave me meds and told me to wear the wrist splint.  This worked for a month, but if I stopped wearing the splint, it would come back immediately.  Another good friend doctor saw me wearing it and asked about it. He told me that if it was carpel tunnel it wouldn't be doing what it was doing.  The fingers that were numb/tingly on me were my pinkie, ring, and middle fingers.  These are not the ones affected with carpel tunnel. So I set up an appointment to see him. He did some more testing and poking around on my wrist.  He said it was my ulnar nerve that was the problem.  We did an x-ray (I remembered that I had fallen in December on the ice and caught myself with that arm, so we thought maybe I had fractured something), but it was not broken.  I was sent to neurology for nerve conduction studies--they all came back normal.  But my reflexes were nonexistent in that arm and the neurologist was worried something may be causing it from my neck, so I had to wait a few months before I could get an MRI of my neck.  After that came back normal, I had to wait another few months to get an MRI of my wrist.  After that came back normal as well. I finally was sent to orthopedic, where I went today. 
   Whew. It has been a long way, but I think the end is in sight.  He said it is definitely my ulnar nerve. Most likely the culprit is from bending my arms at night and it pinches that nerve.  So for the next few weeks, I will be wrapping my arm up to keep it straight at night.  If this doesn't fix it, I will then have a simple surgery to move that tendon and release the pinching.  Oh, may this all work.  The pain is pretty severe at times and annoying at the very least.  When I can't even color with my kids, yeah, I don't like that.  So back to my original thought:  I started this blog because I couldn't even hold a pen for very long to actually write in my journal. Typing I can do as long as I don't set my wrist down to get pinched.