Sara is a trumpet player. She noticed a pain in her rt arm after periods of heavy practice when she was in 8th grade. ( she is very good and played practiced a lot) she also felt like it was hard to get a good deep breath. To be honest I kind of poo pooed it off. She was in 8th grade for crying out loud. @ years go she fell and injured her lower back. Thru a series of MRIs they ended up finding a syrinx in her thoracic spine. she was complaining again about pain in the upper back and down both arms but we chalked it up to the syrinx. Finally her neuro surgeon told her there was nothing he could do and referred her to pain management. I did not want to go. I have seen lots of pain management pts and did not want Sara to have to go down that road but with no other options available we found a narcotic conservative dr and went. He took one look at her and said he thought she had TOS and sent us to dr riefsnyder. By this time she was having sx on both sides. She does not have an extra rib no injuries other then the fall that injured her lower back just the trumpet playing. The surgery has seemed to help some things such as headaches and the achy pain. she has not had one headache since surgery and she was having them daily. Her claw hand is not completely better but is improved along with her ability to do things like hold a pencil extend and flex her wrist but the pain is different and in its own way much worse. Its sensitive to touch and as sara told me " like my arm is on fire" Is there a specialist she should be seeing for this or is it a just wait and see kind of thing? Is this a normal nerve healing kind of symptom or something I need to look further into? Her pain management dr did suggest voice recognition prior to surgery but Sara has muddled thru because she feels like the actual writing helps her to remember and learn. I think we may be at the point where we don't have a choice though. She is on hospital teaching right now...basically the teachers come to the house and teach her. I do think the TOS surgery has helped I just think the nerve involvement before has made the recovery worse.