Sarge:
Internet forums can be a wonderful place to receive support and validation, but are a poor place to define your particular injury, treatment, and physician competency. There are simply too many variables in your particular degree of injury for you to make wide assumptions of your own case based on likely dissimilar cases of others.
That you had a side to side nerve anastomoses serves as notice that your ulnar injury was severe - with no viable transmission past the point of the elbow.
Your surgeon is correct in his communication to you that the anastomoses keeps a low level of neurological “charge” in the distal motor end points. It keeps a temporary charge (a low intensity of neurological transmission) with the hope that the native axon will be able to eventually find its way to the same motor end plates and provide for somewhat normal function. Think of the nerve anastomosis as your computer being on “sleep mode,” maintaining a low wattage of current until you turn your computer on to a full active setting.
The (unfortunate) reality is that native axon regeneration from the elbow to a distal point in the hand is a long, slow, and uncertain process. There is no paved pathway for the axon to follow. There is no certainty that the axon will remain alive and viable over the many months required to reach its destination.
Nerve transfer is an option for denervated nerves that do not show axonal regeneration. The procedure is offered no sooner than 8 months post injury in order to give the regeneration process ample time to show potential. A nerve transfer would involve transferring a peripheral nerve segment from you leg or rib area. Children who are affected by the current trending myositis paralysis (limb paralysis often following a simple cold or respiratory infection) are being offered similar nerve transfers when recovery of affected limbs stalls.
Why do you need a neurologist to authorize and prescribe a trial of corticosteroids? Why did the plastic surgeon/hand surgeon(s) who wrote the recommendation to the neurologist not offer the prescript
ion?
You have listed a number of alternative therapies that you are pursuing. A few of them are suspect for being “shams.” Ex. The electromagnetic therapy, Rife. Be careful of being manipulated by less than savory entities who promise amazing results. When we feel desperate and hope fading, we are most vulnerable to fraud and deceptive marketing.
Getting “data” from individuals on forums has its limitations, especially as you are not able to discern differences in the nature of nerve injury. It is one thing to compare post operative recovery from a hip replacement . . . Comparing your nerve injury to an unknown person on the Internet is far more nuisanced and suspect to faulty intel.
Get yourself aligned with a core of key physician providers that you trust. Too many competing inputs can muddy the decision process. A focused team of core physicians is often better than a buckshot of multiple, competing entities.
Recognize the limits of medicine. There is no magic wand that can cure all that ailes us.
Become well-read and self-educated using recognized and credible information sources and clinical journals. Be alert
of the broad misinformation that exists on Dr. Google, filter out that which is questionable.
Keep true to an orientation of realistic optimism but be cautious of latching onto of false hope.
I do not envy where you are. I appreciate your pain and frustration . . . All you want is to get “better.” That is all that any of us want.
Karen
Post Edited ((Seashell)) : 11/14/2018 12:55:41 PM (GMT-7)