All of our dreams are dying of overdoses
Thank you all for your kind thoughts. It really helps; makes me feel a bit brighter.
I guess I'm doing better. Not physically, but I mean I'm not crying anymore. I still can't wrap my head around the results. At the start of the test, I was actually thinking, "I hope I register some result so this doesn't look like it's all just in my head."
I misstated the scores in my last post. A healthy adult should register a 5 at the least in the thenar eminence area of the hand. The muscles supplied by the Ulnar nerve in my hand registered a 12 -- that's some high quality nervin'. My thenar muscle registered a .13 in the scale, not even one-fifth of the activity at which it should be functioning, and the muscle has almost completedly wasted away. I have no grip strength in the left hand -- I will drop anything heavier than a sheet of paper, and eventually, I will drop the paper too. This is an example of thenar atrophy. I tried to take a webcam pic but as you know, my camera is crappy and it didn't really show up.
For those not familiar with hand anatomy, the muscles in the hand are supplied by two main nerves, the Ulnar and the median, which have lots of smaller nerves branching off to operate the muscles of the fingers in each hand. The median nerve passes through the carpal tunnel and supplies the thumb, index, middle, and like half the ring finger, and the corresponding palm space. The pinkie is supplied by the Ulnar nerve. When carpal tunnel syndrome is present, the tunnel is compressing on the median nerve, which leads to numbness, pain, and nerve damage. It then advances to nerve death and, without nerves to supply sensation to the muscles, the muscles start to waste away.
My case is shockingly advanced, I was told, especially in someone my age. This sort of damage is usually seen in someone 60, 70 years old. 90% of the nerves supplied by the median nerve in my left hand are dead. Which doesn't mean the pain's stopped, because the other nerves are spazzing and panicking and firing off all sorts of pain signals. I burn, I tingle, I twitch in my sleep. Of the nerves supplied by the median nerve in my right hand, 60-70% are dead. Surgery on the right hand will be a little more successful, unlike the left hand, which is just, and I'm quoting here, a salvage operation.
The damage is so extensive that it'll never be repaired and I'll never get my functional strength back in that hand. I'm not sure if the right will end up any better, but the left is just gone. And therapy isn't an option, as I have no muscle in the that hand, and without nerves to make the muscle active, I have no way to rebuild it. It's just this useless limb now.
I always thought I'd get better. I mean, I expect I'll get better, because I can't feel much worse, but I'll never get back to the way I used to be. It never occurred to me that I'd be permanently messed up. My mother keeps telling me that there's always hope, and to never say never, but then she believes in a God, and I sure fucking don't.
I guess I'm doing better. Not physically, but I mean I'm not crying anymore. I still can't wrap my head around the results. At the start of the test, I was actually thinking, "I hope I register some result so this doesn't look like it's all just in my head."
I misstated the scores in my last post. A healthy adult should register a 5 at the least in the thenar eminence area of the hand. The muscles supplied by the Ulnar nerve in my hand registered a 12 -- that's some high quality nervin'. My thenar muscle registered a .13 in the scale, not even one-fifth of the activity at which it should be functioning, and the muscle has almost completedly wasted away. I have no grip strength in the left hand -- I will drop anything heavier than a sheet of paper, and eventually, I will drop the paper too. This is an example of thenar atrophy. I tried to take a webcam pic but as you know, my camera is crappy and it didn't really show up.
For those not familiar with hand anatomy, the muscles in the hand are supplied by two main nerves, the Ulnar and the median, which have lots of smaller nerves branching off to operate the muscles of the fingers in each hand. The median nerve passes through the carpal tunnel and supplies the thumb, index, middle, and like half the ring finger, and the corresponding palm space. The pinkie is supplied by the Ulnar nerve. When carpal tunnel syndrome is present, the tunnel is compressing on the median nerve, which leads to numbness, pain, and nerve damage. It then advances to nerve death and, without nerves to supply sensation to the muscles, the muscles start to waste away.
My case is shockingly advanced, I was told, especially in someone my age. This sort of damage is usually seen in someone 60, 70 years old. 90% of the nerves supplied by the median nerve in my left hand are dead. Which doesn't mean the pain's stopped, because the other nerves are spazzing and panicking and firing off all sorts of pain signals. I burn, I tingle, I twitch in my sleep. Of the nerves supplied by the median nerve in my right hand, 60-70% are dead. Surgery on the right hand will be a little more successful, unlike the left hand, which is just, and I'm quoting here, a salvage operation.
The damage is so extensive that it'll never be repaired and I'll never get my functional strength back in that hand. I'm not sure if the right will end up any better, but the left is just gone. And therapy isn't an option, as I have no muscle in the that hand, and without nerves to make the muscle active, I have no way to rebuild it. It's just this useless limb now.
I always thought I'd get better. I mean, I expect I'll get better, because I can't feel much worse, but I'll never get back to the way I used to be. It never occurred to me that I'd be permanently messed up. My mother keeps telling me that there's always hope, and to never say never, but then she believes in a God, and I sure fucking don't.