Hi everyone!

My name is Julia and I was diagnosed with vascular thoracic outlet syndrome 18 months ago after getting a blood clot in my right arm out of the blue and had a 1st rib resection and scalenectomy shortly after diagnosis. I felt lucky to find a good surgeon who had experience performing this surgery and thought my life would go back to normal.

Things changed 9 months ago when I started getting terrible shoulder, neck and upper back pain as well as pain in my fingers and arms when using the computer. I've seen different doctors but am still in pain and am afraid I'm always going to feel this way. Has anyone else experienced problems like this many months after surgery?

My pain is most acute right over the surgical site on the muscles they cut through to do the rib resection (my surgery was above and below my collarbone). Does anyone have any recommendations on what I should do? I've starting to feel very desperate and depressed and am afraid I'm always going to be in this much pain or worse.

For my work and now as a PhD student I use the computer all the time and am starting to think that perhaps my TOS is related to a repetitive stress disorder. This scares me even more since the computer is so important to my work. I've tried physical and occupational therapy and am currently seeing an osteopath who has me on muscle relaxers which helped a little bit. I've also been trying acupuncture and gentle yoga but the pain is still there. I'm willing to make major changes to my lifestyle and have already started working in a more ergonomic way and am trying to limit my computer use, but I still find that my pain is staying the same or even getting worse. Has anyone with these symptoms who uses the computer for their job found a sustainable way to keep working?

Thank you so much to anyone who can offer any advice or help or a similar story to know I'm not alone!

Julia