2 years ago, the pads under my thumbs were throbbing and sort of turning blue. It scared me so i went to my doctor and she sent me to the hospital for tests. The throbbing went away. The tests hurt…they were sort of these electrical shocks all up and down my arms…actually it was painful and it lasted awhile. The diagnosis came back that I had some carpal tunnel in one and a pinched nerve in the other. I found that odd, since they both hurt at the same time, turned blue. Anyway, the pain and discoloration went away for about a year. it came back for just a few days and went away. It rears up months later just for a day or so, so I don’t pay it much mind. I was thinking that it had to be more than that.
Anyway, the throbbing and pain started again about 5 weeks ago and hasn’t let up. I’m going to make an appt. with my new doc. I won’t have surgery if it’s suggested. Does anyone else suffer from this and what do you do? It’s just in that padded area under the thumb on the inside of my palms. One side is worse than the other.
I had a carpal tunnel issue that was caused by repetitive stress injury - pulling weeds. My doctor gave me samples of Celebrex (yup, the infamous drug) for pain and inflammation and a wrist brace. I wore the brace religiously for a few months to make sure that everything healed. The drug was a miracle for me; it took care of the pain and swelling very quickly. Hope yours can be resolved without surgery.
Thanks, I used to take Celebrex for arthritis before I started acupuncture. Maybe a brace and that will work.
My husband had carpal tunnel from using the mouse/keyboard at work about 5 years ago. They sent him to a specialist, adjusted his desk and he wore a brace and took meds for a while. Now when it flairs up he starts wearing the brace and it resolves itself.
My sister has severe carpal tunnel; she wears a brace every night and has gotten some relief from acupuncture and chiropractic. When I had it in both hands about 12 years ago, I had the surgery and was pleased with the result and instant relief.
I’ve had intermittent carpal but more consistent cubital tunnel syndrome. (The latter is the ulnar nerve and the entrapment is more likely at the elbow though it can also be in the shoulder.) If it’s severe, they can free up the nerve by cutting the ligament that entraps it. In terms of therapy, other than immobilization at night and anti-inflammatories, I believe in stretching because that seems - for me - to restore function fairly well. In brief, carpal & cubital tunnel tend to flow from repeated motions and the body can’t handle repetition of the same narrow task without consequence. Like most people, I tried not using the body parts but found that only suppressed the problem until I started doing things again. So I tried restoring full motion to the wrist and elbow and shoulder - where these nerves all come together in a “plexus” - and have had a lot of success. The idea is that full motion re-enables the joint so you don’t just start doing the same repetition and generating the same inflammation.
One of my favorite stretches for both carpal and cubital is based in simplest yoga: get into child’s pose and then push your hands out as far as you can and move them to the right (or left) and try to sit back until you feel a stretch that reaches all the way from the tip of your little finger down to your waist. Then do the other side. You can extend this to a complete wrist stretch with a little experimenting. The same, btw, is true of ankles and that has dramatically helped me with my hallux rigidus - the big toe that needs to be fused which changed my gait because of the pain. And that has helped dramatically reduce the neuromas - Morton’s, etc. - that cause the undersides of my feet to tingle and hurt.