MRI: Check

It's been approximately forever since I updated, but I've been pretty busy so far this semester. When I went back to the rehabilitation specialist on December 17th, he thought the problem with my arm could be a squished nerve from sleeping with my arm over my boyfriend sometimes. He decided to do an MRI of my brachial plexus, where the thoracic outlet problem could be, and also an MRI neurogram of my arm to see if there's anything going on there.

That was a lot of work to get done. My insurance approved it pretty much right away, but the specialist's office was pretty disorganized, and I didn't get the MRI until February 11th. It's taken from then all the way right up until today for the doctor to finally look at the report and call me. The MRIs didn't find anything, so the doctor doesn't have any other suggestions. He thinks I should go back to the vascular surgeon and have her tell me if she thinks it would be worthwhile to have surgery or not.

Since none of the TOS treatments helped, I don't think treating the TOS by having surgery is a good idea. Surgery is super risky, and I don't think it would do any good. The doctor said he would refer me to a pain clinic, so maybe they can do something to help. I kind of have my doubts about that, though. It seems like a pain clinic would just be treating the symptom (the pain) instead of what's causing it.

I've been trying to work on my posture and get in a position that's better for my back, and relax my arms/shoulders. It makes it harder to write, and I'm not really sure it's helping anything, but I have to try something. I still feel like I'm typing on someone else's keyboard whenever I try to write, and it really slows me down. It's so frustrating.

I stuck it out through all four weeks of the chiropractor, but that didn't help at all. It seemed to make my back way worse than it's ever been, though. I have pretty much constant pain whenever I try to stand or walk now, so that's annoying. I tried not using the mattress topper and it didn't seem to help, so I have no idea what's causing the pain.