Hi Everyone,

I am a 35 year old female that began having swelling inside my elbows, with burning pain and decreasing use of my hands at the beginning of this year. While I have numbness in all my fingers I am also experiencing significant pain throughout my arms. I had no instance of injury or strain. I have been diagnosed with complete ulna nerve dislocation in one elbow and cubital tunnel compression in the other. I was only diagnosed after going to doctors over 3 months and finally a rheumatologist gave me an ultra sound.

An ultrasound technician mentioned he believed I also have some sort of TOS or vertebra compression. For 20 years I have numbness in my arms and legs all at the same time, I can barely sleep at night. I see stars all the time and get very low bp, I have not been able to take a standing shower since I was 19. If I raise my arms I immediately lose feeling. I experience weird random sharp electrical shooting pains in my arms and legs all day long. I get the sensation of water running down my legs. I get major muscle spasms and spent two weeks last month with my neck totally locked up and barely able to breath. I am experiencing constant pain in my chest and clavicles. In Dec before my elbows started bothering me I started experiencing excrutiating pain in my legs while walking, it continues for 2 days after even when still. It does. To feel like muscle pain but the kind of pain you experience when a limb is waking up, except it is evenly distributed through the my legs and is a pain I can't even believe I am able to survive it is so intense.

At this point I am not sure who to see. I live in Ventura County, but am willing to drive to LA to see a specialist. I have found lots of sports medicine surgeons for injuries but I feel I have much more going on than the elbow nerves and am hoping to find someone who can look at it as a group of things going on. All of it became very bad all of a sudden, with new things like the elbows. I am not sure if I see a neurologist or an orthopedic or what. I currently have no general doc.

Hello, You had a duplicate thread here, so I moved it to our TOS forum for you..
Here is the link to our TOS forum- you'll see your thread near the top of the threads list.. Be sure to explore all the sticky threads there also.
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum24.html


Have you had any C spine MRI yet to make sure no extra cervical ribs??
Or any other anomalies?

Thanks!

The only tests I have had are the Ultrasound on my elbows at a rheumatologist office. Even he did not think I had anything actually wrong and when I brought up compressions he said I just have fibro, the Ultrasound technician told him he believed I have TOS on both side in addition to the elbows (I was sent to the rheumatologist because docs kept just saying I only have fibro and mystery pains, no one had ever done any images or tests before this, which I don't understand why not) the US technician did a test where he moved my arms around to test my pulse. Funny thing is after the ultrasound, the rheumatologist said he was not going to see me anymore, I have never had a doctor break up with me before. My GP, who I am not going to see anymore, also said I only had fibro and something mysterious that can never be explained and prescribed my prednisone, which I did not take.

Hello and Welcome Sunflowerseed,

I am so sorry you have had to come and join us. You are certainly having to deal with a lot that is concerning right now.

As someone who had a peripheral nerve injury and subsequent repair, I recommend seeing a Peripheral Nerve Surgeon about the dislocation and compression if you are questioning if you need surgical evaluation. These are either a neurosurgeon or plastics/reconstruction surgeon who has undergone a fellowship in operating on peripheral nerves. It requires micro-tools and microsurgery to safely work on nerves. Orthopedics doesn't have the right training. There are not a lot of these doctors so travel is not unusual. I had to drive 3 hours to get to mine and he was worth every mile on the road for surgery and follow up.

In Cali I don't know of anyone near you but a peripheral nerve surgeon who did a fellowship at New Orleans peripheral nerve program operates at Cedars-Sinai. They also have TOS surgeons at Cedars-Sinai
http://www.nervemed.com/about/dr-aaron-g-filler-md-phd

and at UC San Diego you will find one of the US most prominent nerve surgeons where they do amazing, groundbreaking work. Dr. Brown trained in the Washington University program my doctor came out of. They are considered to be one, if not the best, in the states
http://health.ucsd.edu/specialties/n...s/default.aspx

I agree with Jo*mar about getting some imaging. I am glad that you had those conduction studies done. There are things to try before resorting to surgery. Some people respond to PT or chiropractic work. There are even treatments to reduce nerve swelling and scar adhesion done by ultrasound guided injections. Sometimes a specially trained Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Specialist can do this depending on the problem. Get the best experts you can and go from there.

You will find Search and FAQ at the top of every page to help you look for specific topics and answer common forum usage questions.

I hope you find relief and healing soon,

Thanks for the response. I basically have no idea what kind of doctor to seek out at all. I have multiple things going on but feel like they are all connected. I have had the numbness since I can remember but just recently had a bunch of things begin all within a month of each other that seemed unrelated at first and to occur for no reason.

I have not had a nerve conduction study. All I have had was an ultrasound on each elbow, done at a rheumatologist so office. I have seen a GP, urgent care, emergency room, and rheumatologist. It was the ER who I went to when I could no longer move my neck and had severe pressure and stiffness in my chest and back with burning pain that they sent me to a rheumatologist. Like I said no one believed I had anything wrong despite having a golf ball sized swelling in my elbow. I am glad I at least had swelling there because otherwise I would have never even gotten the ultrasound, even though I had to go to multiple doctors just to get that. The rheumatologist just said to go to a sports medicine doctor to have my one elbow fixed, it has ligament damage in addition to the nerve dislocation.

Sorry, I meant to say glad you had the ultrasound done...

Academic centers can be good for complicated problems. There's also bound to be a specific place in L.A. where they do reconstructive work, so having orthopedics, plastics and physical medicine (who often do sports/rehab) work as a team and consult each other is not unusual. That might give you some options on your elbow and cubital tunnel issues.