Change of appointment, if possible, et al?
Hi Doctor,
Two elements to my forum inclusion thus far.
Firstly, would it be possible to change my nerve conduction study date from Thursday 16 February (9.30am) to Friday 17 February (any) please?
Secondly, my questionaire threw me a bit, i.e. when I am woken in the night, pain might be a too stronger term for what I feel...I am woken by my hands and just don't know what to do with them. I have tried wiggling them and hanging them off the edge of the bed but....! Numbness, definitely, all the time, and quite a lot of loss of strength, and a general ache in the bases of my thumbs. They are also "slow" in working for a few hours, especially on waking. I wear Thermoskin wrist supports on both hands much of the time but I do not work in them as they are restrictive, for this I wear neoprene supports.
Just wanted to inform you of this so as to give you a better understanding of my questionaire answers.
Thanks Doctor
Best Regards
Matt Cooke
OK, Doctor, no problem with the initial appointment, work will just have to have it!
Thanks for replying so soon, I'm glad to have made contact with you and to have clarified these points. I will be glad to get something done about my hands as they are impacting on my life.
Looking forward to meeting you and if I can help with any other observational studies, please let me know.
Best Regards
Matt Cooke.
I can't do Fridays I'm afraid as I work at Kings College Hospital in London on a Friday. Those questions towards the end of the questionnaire that ask about pain/tingling/numbness are not actually mine - they are a standard instrument for assessing the subjective severity of CTS symptoms which is widely used in research studies. The answers to those questions translate into the severity scores which you will find under 'My CTS Record' - you scored 3.91 and 2.5 for your left hand and 3.91 and 2.75 for your right hand suggesting that you have fairly severe subjective symptoms which are symmetrical and some functional impairment which is slightly more of a problem in your right hand. The main use for these numbers is for us to ask you the same questions again at a later date to see how your personal answers have changed. As such the assumption is that your personal interpretation of 'pain', 'tingling' etc will remain reasonably consistent and the fact that someone else's interpretation might be different does not matter that much.
Thermoskin seem to manfacture a bewildering array of different braces and supports and it is hard to be sure if you have the ones that would be most appropriate for CTS - they should be fairly close in design to the ones illustrated on this site, adjusted to hold the wrist straight, and worn at night. Neoprene supports which do not incorporate a stiffener which holds the wrist straight might even aggravate CTS in some circumstances.
See you, I hope, on the 16th - sorry it's not sooner but we are still getting rather more incoming referrals at present than I am confortable with. JB