Nerve rebuilding in hands??

What is the cause of the nerve damage? There are some claims of nerve regeneration for some conditions.

I wish I could get something for my spinal condition, but none of my doctors has mentioned any cure.

My neuro isn't quite sure "why" yet. I have 3 MRIs scheduled Monday. Brain, neck, and back. I go in for those results 9 days afterwards. He said when I come in they will do the nerve rebuilder treatment and was talking about water and current. My EMGs on my arms were pretty good. He suspects the hands and jaw pain i have come from my neck. That's all I have gotten out of him so far.

Sarah

Sarah:
Is the altered sensation and clawing if the hand present in one hand or in both hands?

Is the clawing of the hands limited to the ring and small finger? Or is the clawing evident in the majority of the fingers and thumb?

Peripheral nerves are nerve fibers that have exited the spinal cord. Ex. The ulnar nerve is a major nerve fiber that extends from the brachial plexus that originates in the axila of the arm. The ulnar passes behind the elbow and travels down the arm, controlling the ring and pinky fingers. Ulnar nerve palsy describes a peripheral nerve palsy of the ulnar nerve. Symptoms are loss of sensation and a clawing of the ring and pinky.

A peripheral nerve injury can be pressure to the nerve that interrupts the transmission of impulses. It can also be due to physical trauma to the nerve (falling through a window, slicing the nerve; a car accident that causes injury and swelling to the arm).

If both of your hands are affected, your neurologist will be looking for a systemic causation as opposed to a local causation (the examples above).

Inflammatory peripheral neuropathy would be one possibility for bilateral symptoms. Guillian Barre' is an example of a system inflammatory process that causes demyelination and interrupted impulse transition that would cause bilateral symptoms. Multiple sclerosis is another possibility or other auto-immune process. An MRI will be able to detect inflammatory processes that may be affecting the myelin sheath.

Electrical stimulation of the damaged peripheral nerve does benefit by keeping the nerve viable as it recovers from the underlying cause. It is like adding a power source to a severed telephone cable.

I would be very hesitant to agree to the "underwater electrical therapy" without a firm differential diagnosis of the underlying cause.

If you have an inflammatory peripheral neuropathy, the course of treatment would include corticosteroids, IV methotrexate, and soft hand splints to keep the hands from clawing (prevent tendon contractures and permanent deformity).

You can Google "inflammatory peripheral neuropathy" to see if this seems to fit your symptom profile. It would also give you a basis of knowledge to then form questions to pose to your treating neurologist. I am concerned that your neurologist has given you only a modicum of information and is recommending a procedure without a diagnosis to ascertain whether or not his "underwater nerve regrowth treatment" is even applicable or beneficial.

Bottom Line: Your neurologist needs to be communicating with you in more detail than he has to date.

Make sure that you obtain copies of the written reports from your upcoming MRIs and the radiologist's interpretation of the findings.
I hope that the MRIs can provide some definitive information.

In the interim, you may want to make a make-shift hand splint out of basic everyday cardboard to keep your wrist and fingers straight. You can cut the cardboard in the shape of a hand mitten to the outline of your hand and use stretchy Coban to keep the hand in place. You want to passively stretch the fingers and wrist into neutral extension (flat). Wear the cardboard splint for an hour. Remove and mobilize the fingers, check the skin for any excessive pressure area or irritatiOn. Repeat 3-4 times a day for one hour.

Thinking of you,
- Karen -

Sarah:
Your full symptom description does give suggestion to possible multiple sclerosis more so than an inflammatory peripheral neuropathy. Your reports of muscle spasticity and memory/cognitive problems along with pupil dilation are suspicious for some of demyelination. It is not unusual for symptoms to wax and wane with an auto-immune demyelination process.

Do you have confidence and trust in the neurologist that you are seeing?

The upcoming MRIs should give a degree of clarity in advancing an accurate differential diagnosis. I would urge you to get a printed copy of the radiologist's findings and interpretation.

I am sorry that you are dealing with some many interfering symptoms while struggling to find a root cause/source.

Sending you supportive prayer and a dose of good karma,
Karen

The big question is where is the neuropathy?

I have a lot of your symptoms, hands cramping up, neck and spine pain, stumbling around with blurry vision in morning until I get my 2 cups of coffee, burning pain and weakness in both legs, but there's nothing wrong with my actual peripheral nerves in hands, arms or legs! My problem is mainly from my neck. I have 5 or 6 crushed vertebrae, lots of stenosis and disc problems. But mainly it's from breaking C3 and needing surgery there.

Some of my pain in left leg is from breaking my ankle very badly and needing 3 surgeries, but the burning and muscle spasms are from my neck. Stretching and tearing the tendons in the ankle just cause regular pain.

Gabapentin caused me to have apnea problems and I quit it cold turkey. That wasn't fun! It doesn't do anything for spinal nerve problems like pinched nerves, as far as I can see, frommy own experience and posts from spinal people. It seems to help with diabetic neuropathy, but there's nothing wrong with my actual peripheral nerves.

Baclofen didn't help with my muscle spasms, but that may have been because I couldn't get up to a theraputic dose because of the side effects. I'm on Ativan 1 mg at night. It helps, but beware it's addicting.

Don't get hopes up for imaging to provide definitive answers either. After my last MRI my neurologist said he didn't see much change. How much change does it take? I hurt more and opioids don't touch nerve pain.

I'll be interested to hear if you get any results from electrical stimulation and how they do it.

Sarah:
You have my empathy for all of the medical issues that you are juggling.

It took 8 years of poorly attentive physician appointments and diagnostic testing to finally ease through and identify correctly the root cause of my health issues - pituitary failure and auto-immune Addison's. I had a laundry list of theorized diagnoses by then, all of them incorrect and misguided. Everything from fibromyalgia, premature ovary failure, chronic fatigue syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, and more. Years of fruitless searching for an explanation of my faltering health. Medication dosing errors and complications. It has left me skeptical and distrusting of medicine. Years lost that I cannot recover. The trajectory of my life forever changed.

There is a lot that the profession of medicine does not know nor understand about the human body and how it functions.

My sense is that you have not yet been identified correctly with what is ailing and interfering with the workings of your body.

All you need is one competent physician who will listen to your narrative and take the time to delve into discovering why your body is faltering.
Just one good physician can make the critical difference to arrive at that "ah ha" moment when the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

Your facial pain could well be caused by facial muscles co-contracting on spasm and constructing the trigeminal nerve. Trigeminal nerve pain is excruciating. A Botox injection into the hyper-reflexive facial muscle can often bring genuine (temporary) relief.
- karen -