Is My World Over? :-/

TheTattooArtist
Offline

Hi everyone I'm Luke,33 and from South Yorkshire.
So... I have heard of CTS in my career being a Tattoo Artists and it looks like its come and paid me a visit.
I will be honest with you, I'm scarred to death!
My art has been my world since day one and is the only thing I know. Basically its saved my life from the person I once was in my younger days.

During the time of being diagnosed I have received 3 different diagnosis's. 2 from A&E and 1 from my doctor.
The first was repetitive strain, the second was a trapped nerve in my neck and the final being carpal tunnel syndrome.

However there are certain things that don't add up with my diagnosis. I have the numb tingling sensation in all five of the fingers on my hand and sometimes the area can become a tad itchy but not in the normal way. The dull achy feeling I was experiencing in my fingers has now spread past my elbow and into my upper arm and lower neck. However this pain does differ from that of the one in my lower arm in that it is less intense.

I also suffer from a right deviated septum and this has caused me to spend the last 15 years sleeping on my right side with my arm under my head extending my nasal passage so I can breathe on a night. Hence causing a lot of aches in my wrist which I have to switch positions in the night to cause myself less discomfort.

I hope upon reading this someone is able to help me with my problem and give me a little more advice as to whether this is CTS or in fact just another misdiagnosis.

jeremydpbland
Online

The first thing to do is run through the symptom questionnaire on the site here. It is by no means infallible but will give us a fair idea whether your symptoms are classical CTS or nothing like it. Quite a few patients get symptoms in all 5 digits so I would not let that put me off, even if we do not fully understand why this should be so. The other ways of making progress with this are to get some nerve conduction studies done, get it imaged with high resolution ultrasound or MRI (MRI can be tricky if you have a lot of tattoos), and to try the effect of non surgical treatment such as splinting or steroid injection. If it is CTS it should not be a catastrophe - most cases are successfully treated. JB

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