Originally Posted by gibbrn

Hi welcome to our little club......
I can't believe you have been through so much!!
You must be, I suspect going for an MRI of your blood vessels to see if you have compression there....or to see more of the area.

One of the first tests to see if I had vascular tos was an ultrasound of the brachial plexus. I had total occlusion in 'provacative' positions. After that test I had a veinogram(more detail and more expensive--they start out cheap in Canada....and rightly so....why pay for an MRI if an ultrasound can give you the results you need) and they put a contrast dye into my veins and then took x-rays to see if there was compression. they made me go into 'provocative' positions ie: superman position...arms overhead to see the compression and sure enough 90% occlusion of the subclavian vein and artery. Not good....had to have first rib removed.

I had surgery July 2005. I had first rib removed and was post op diagnosed with neurogenic and vascular tos. I also had a scalene removed. Now I am a rare person with cervical ribs....ribs that come off your C-7 vertebra.
So that didn't help much....so 1st rib removed.....felt like I was run over by a train due to the bone pain....however I am guessing you have a pretty good understaning of bone pain. It felt like 100lbs on my chest all day long.
All went well and was rehabing at home doing simple tasks with no lifting and no overhead stuff....etc....
I came off all my narcotics ( I was on close to 300mg of morphine a day) and all my muscle relaxants and was totally drug free.!!!

I went to Physio in October and they ruined the surgery. I am now back to worse than before surgery. My best advice is make sure you PT knows what TOS is and call it TOS not the long term name cause if they don't know wht TOS is they won't have a clue how to treat you. I'm sure you have a good relationship with a PT due to all your surgeries.

Best PT advice.....no weights ever again....only light stretching until you can work up to yoga or something post op....no weights ever again.....sorry...(for me this was huge as I lifted wts before and was training for a marathon...work injury....tos....surgery....chronic pain....fibromyalgia....short version of events) I would also council not to use therabands ever they are sooooo bad for tos. Also no overhead stuff ever......and don't do any heavy lifting....which i am gonna assume you have been through precautions before due to your back and neck issues....

Hope some of this helps....my surgery did for sure stop part of the vascular tos...I still get a blue hand and it changes temperature and swells up now and again but not like it used to.

take care and ask away for more info!!! feel free to PM me if there is more you'd like to ask.

hugs,
Victoria
ps I am a disabled RN