Greetings everyone,

Does anyone else have problems with their whole arm falling dead asleep?

Even before this whole TOS thing, I have, like many of you, slept in a weird position so that my hand or part of my arm falls asleep. However, last night I was woken up at six o'clock in the morning by a noisy roommate only to find my arm completely dead all the way up to my neck/shoulder region. When I sat up in bed, it flopped around like a dead rag doll arm. I had to take my other hand and shake blood back into it. Why had this happened ? Apparently, my special pillow had fallen off my bed so that while I was still sleeping in my normal position, the thoracic outlet area must have gotten too compressed. What bugs me is that this has happened one other time in the last week, though not as severely because I still had my pillow under my head. If my roommate had not woken me up, I could've kept sleeping quite comfortably on my completely dead right (and dominant) arm and who knows what would've happened. For those of you that don't know my history, I was diagnosed with arterial neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome and have been putting off a first rib resection mainly because I'm too freaked out about it to go through with the procedure!