I cannot "stress" enough that many of the doctors giving us very negative outlook due to atrophy from dennervated muscles (nerve irritation/dysfunction, not disuse from pain guarding), are either hedging their bets, reciting textbooks written during the black death, or frightening us into surgical intervention.

As long as that nerve has some ability to function, even partially, there is hope. Also, even when severe wasting is ocurring, there is hope. I think this BP nerve stuff is so foreign to so many doctors, that they can only fall back on what they learned in med school. They don't run into many cases where there is a chronic/progressive neurological decline resulting in classic wasting/atrophy, because it doesn't usually get that far.

Or, because this pattern of atrophy (thenar, hand intrinsics, ulnar wasting) has some of the "classic" signs of an ulnar nerve (elbow) neuropathy, [some] docs would rather have a "go" at the elbow and hope for the best.

The presence of thenar/hand intrinsics wasting, along with the wasting of ulnar innervated muscles is a pretty good indicator that this isn't a strictly "elbow" problem.

They may, like Dr. Ahn, get a patient that yanked out a nerve root playing baseball at the Dodger game the night before, or avulsed one in a car accident, who is quickly taken to surgery, gets timely intervention, rehab by the best rehab docs in the world, then sends them back to their sport/life, with great success.

Those of us who aren't "obvious" are in a sort of limbo. Not many doctors when they see wasting, are heroic, especially if they cannot "pin" that wasting on some obvious trauma, illness or event.

Back to my point: As long as the nerve is still attached, and has some response, and even while we are waiting for some magical way of knowing where that compression is, and how it is occurring, and what treatment might be appropriate, we can keep moving what we have, as best we can, and retain as much muscle/function as possible. It isn't over until the fat guy sings.