As I mentioned previously, I had severe — can’t sleep can’t concentrate can’t deal with life level severe — pain in my left wrist and hand. Also, I couldn’t bend my fingers or wrist. Eventually, I got a shot of anti-inflammatory (injected into a buttock, not into my arm, but my butt hasn’t gotten any smaller as a result), and a day or so later things began to get better. Sooooo much better. Still not completely well, but getting pretty close.
When I was wearing a splint, it was interesting (and a bit irritating — which is a bit unfair of me, since the advice was kindly meant, but I was in pain!) how often non-doctors would offer me a diagnoses. I’m not talking about friends, but about near-strangers I’d meet at work or in a store. The popular consensus seems to be that my problem was (is?) carpel tunnel syndrome, even though I lacked the numbness and tingling typical of CTS.
The last person I saw (a physician’s assistant; the physician herself wasn’t available for an appointment for weeks) I saw seemed to be leaning towards a diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis, not a happy possibility.
We’ll know more after the next round of blood tests, but I think she’s mistaken. True, I have a large rash on my side; and I can see why a rash combined with hand and wrist pain would make someone think “psoriatic arthritis.” But the rash doesn’t resemble psoriasis at all, to my eyes (not scaly, no patches around my elbows or knees, not red enough, in two big patches rather than lots of clumps…). Nor did my pain precisely resemble any of the typical kinds of pain patients with psoriatic arthritis experience.
As it happened, I also had no primary care physician (although I have one now, who I will perhaps see in person someday). Which gave me an opportunity to see how truly horrible it is to be relying on urgent care centers and emergency rooms for one’s physicking. Maybe it really is psoriatic arthritis; neither the ER nor the urgent care doc even considered the possibility, because neither of them knew I had a rash. (They didn’t ask, and it didn’t occur to me that it could be a relevant thing to mention.) This country desperately needs universal health care. ((I’m not saying universal health care would have solved my problem; I am saying that people who think that ERs and urgent care centers are in any way adequate for people who can’t afford health insurance are wearing rose-colored glasses two inches thick.))
Anyhow. I can type again, but I don’t want to overdo it, so I’m going to take it light on blogging for at least another week or so. But, meanwhile – welcome back, me.
I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better! Still, what you said about this country’s health care is true and it sucks. The ER in my town has ridiculous waiting times and the care there is NOT good … Last time I was there, the doctor prescribed a medicine and when the nurse – who acted like she was high, but I’m sure that was just her personality – brought it, it wasn’t the right pill. I didn’t know that, because I wasn’t even sure what he prescribed (the doctor didn’t tell me), but since she was a little loopy I asked her what medicine it was just to make sure that she knew. She didn’t, and had to go back to the pharmacy and see what she was supposed to have brought me. It turns out instead of bringing me what the doctor prescribed, she brought me the one medication that I’m allergic to. Nice.
She also accused me, in front of my mother, of smoking marijuana (because I’m a teenager and I had bronchitis and apparently smoking is the only way teenagers can get bronchitis). I don’t, by the way.
I can’t imagine relying on that sort of care every time I needed to see the doctor. I think I would be dead shortly.
Anyway, I hope they figure out what’s wrong with you soon – and also hope that whatever it is isn’t bad – and I don’t mean to scare you with my scary nurse story; my mother was a nurse for years and that is not typical nurse behavior.
What I’m trying to say is – get well soon!
I’m glad you are feeling better. I’ve been missing you.
Well, that sucks. Hope you feel better soon!
Saw this and thought you might be interested:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18725638/
CTS usually creeps up on you slowly. Yes, numbness and tingling are from more advanced versions of problems, but early problems are not usually sharp pain, IME. They’re usually achy pain that’s aggravated by specific movements. And, not sudden in onset exactly. I didn’t think of that at all, but that’s probably because I’ve dealt with carpal tunnel and tendinitis and so I have a very personal profile for it.
Are you using the herbs I got you? Good luck!
So sorry that you’re experience both the physical pain and the draining emotional pain of having to deal with urgent care centers and ERs. I’m a family med resident (doctor training in family medicine) and strongly believe in holistic care and continuity of care. It’s such an embarassment to our country that so many people HAVE to resort to urgent care centers and ERs for their care — whether insured or not (because sometimes the issue is money and other times the issue is the doctor just ain’t in when you’re sick!)
We definitely have to move towards a universal health care system. Primary care needs to be a huge focus of our country’s healthcare money (instead of specialty services, ER/urgent care costs, etc). And we have to move in that direction quickly.
I personally hate the primary care wait system, the need for doctors to see x number of patients in a half day, the lack of reimbursement to docs for prevention and treatments that matter (causing a move away from them), and hope to open a clinic someday soon that will be both appt and walk-in, so that people who aren’t feeling well can be seen the same day (and a visit to the ER or urgent care can be avoided!). Trust, love, and good clinical sense will all be integral to the clinic :>
Just as an aside — I’m sure you know of a number of organizations that are focusing on universal health care (from doctor/nurses organizations to business to labor to advocacy) but I wanted to mention the 2 year old fledgling but wonderful organization — the National Physicians Alliance — http://www.npalliance.org (and blog http://www.npalliance.org/blog), which is focusing on universal health care, pharmaceutical industry issues, and integrity in medicine. There’s hope, even among the doctors! (disclaimer, i’m on the board of the organization).
Take it easy on that hand for a bit. Good to know your butt hasn’t gotten smaller as a result of the meds (that was funny!)
Heaps of empathy and good wishes for your continued recovery! I’m just recovering from shingles with dominant hand and its arm hors de combat for 4 week – so I’ve a slight idea what you are going through.
I can knit again – very important – but have to limit my keyboard use. What I had not reckoned with is the weird effects on the brain of having part of myself still there and certain to recover but for the time being a useless and heavy piece of meat to carry around.
Hi, amp. Hope you’re feeling better. I’m kind of rooting for CTS myself. Not only is it relatively benign and treatable, as things that could cause this sort of problem go, but it fits with your lifestyle (work and recreation involving computer use.) Get a good CTS minimizing mouse- and keypad and a neurologist to treat it.
The ER is a lousy place to get primary care. It is expensive, uncomfortable, and slow. Plus there’s no good follow-up, except for clinic referrals, which many people can’t go to because they would have to pay up front there. When I was a resident we used to periodically admit people who showed up in the ER even if they weren’t really sick enough to truly need a hospital because we knew that if we sent them home with clinic follow-up, they’d never go to the clinic (see above) and would just be back in the ER in a week or a month, three quarters dead, ten times harder to fix, and 100X as expensive. And people wonder why the US spends more money than any other country in the world on healthcare. (end rant)
I hope you are feeling better. I have had CTS secondary to primary arthritis, probably rheumatoid. Sometimes there is tingling and numbness, but at times (especially at first) it was just pure pain — like my wrists were on fire.
Don’t let anyone diagnose you in a hurry — my rheumatologist took two years to come to a “preliminary” diagnosis and in the meantime used the least intensive treatments on an escalating basis to treat symptoms. Many arthritis drugs are toxic, and I decided after many years that the best thing you could do was to treat the symptoms in the way least likely to cause side effects. and accept that there was no cure.
And as my arthritis ebbed so did my CTS. Splints give relief from acute pain (especially at night), but they made my hands stiff as a board and I used them only when necessary to sleep. There are also “soft” splints that can be worn like fingerless gloves.
Anyway, keep me in mind as a little resource on things related to arthritis. BTDT.
and hope to open a clinic someday soon that will be both appt and walk-in, so that people who aren’t feeling well can be seen the same day (and a visit to the ER or urgent care can be avoided!).
This is a key to improving our healthcare system regardless of how the care gets paid for. I’m willing to bet, based on my own experience (and I have reasonably decent healthcare insurance) that a lot of visits to the ER are based on the fact that primary care doctors are generally heavily booked and it’s hard to get an appointment to see them for anything that can’t wait at least a couple of weeks to a month.
Amp; get well soon and good luck. Be sure to keep your head up and keep on top of the doctors. These days you have to be an informed consumer to get the best health care. They will make mistakes and you have to ask questions. I won’t relate my family’s stories here, but I’ve had some bad experiences where trouble was only forstalled because I checked out my doctor’s statements and asked some questions.
You may want to look into getting some voice recognition software so that you can dictate your posts instead of typing them. There are a number of programs available, and they’re not very expensive. It might be worth it to save the wear and tear on your hands. Just so you know, I’m using one to dictate this comment.
No, the majority of ED visits that are not true emergent situations are of people who do not have PCP docs. one way to help lower institutional costs of healthcare is do intervention and f/u in target populations to encourage use of PCPs. Preventative care and access to it are WAY cheaper than ED care.
And Amp, I really hope you feel better soon and get answers/solutions. it sucks to deal with the healthcare industry. Best of luck.
ETA: ED= Emergency department.
temporary thread hijack since I suspect Amp’s reading this:
There’s an “edit post” feature. Can you easily add a “delete post” feature?
Maia has asked me not to post on her threads, for example. Once or twice I have done so accidentally (has to do with how I follow links and flows of arguments). When the “oops!” moment hits, is there a simple way to delete posts?
Hmm. Maybe if you click to notify the mods about your post and ask us to delete it.
are you a mod, too? I’m losing track. So it’s you (Myca), Maia, Rachel S, mandolin (aka “Rachel S II”), Amp, and Charles (I think)… anyone else?
Well, there’s also a few ex-bloggers or current-but-extremely-infrequent bloggers who in theory could use their mod powers here. But in practice, it’s those six folks you just listed, and those are the folks who get emailed when you use the “report this comment to the moderators” link.
To answer your question, I have no programming abilities. So I can’t add a “delete” function because the plug-in I used doesn’t have one built in.
But even if I could, I wouldn’t, because it becomes too confusing if other people respond to a post that then disappears completely. What I’d suggest instead is that during the 30 minute window when you can edit your post, edit it by deleting all that you wrote and putting [Post deleted by Sailorman] or something like that there instead.
(Did Maia ask you to stay off her threads entirely? I thought she just asked you to stay off the ones about rape. Guess I was confused!)
Amp: :) Don’t know why I didn’t think of that. heh; just goes to show what a week it’s been.
Mandolin: I think so. …? I honestly don’t recall, now that you mention it. But we disagree so violently about the things on which we disagree that it’s probably a good idea anyway.
Amp!
I’m so so sorry – I seem to have switched health problems with you last time we met :(
I hope we’re in on the same (good) joke, and that you know why I could’ve written your post in my sleep this month ;D
My wrist is fine so far, but the “crone’s” will eventually call for prednisone [steroid; good for: intestines; cats with psoriasisl.
We’re all falling apart, aren’t we?