Post Op 1 year now have stabbing pain in hand
Im 52. In good health no broken bones or traumatic accidents. So far....I had CTS a year ago(both hands) and I had all the necessary test done before proceeding with the surgery. A year before this I was going to physical therapy in hopes of avoiding the surgery. While this helped, it became necessary to have the surgery as my hands would go numb while sleeping and would wake me up feeling like they were on fire and stay this way for hours. Prior to today my last follow up was in June 2014. I was experiencing at that time a throbbing or aching feeling in the palm area that I was told is normal. While the numbness and burning is no longer present, I now have what I call a stabbing pain going from the fatty area of my palm below my thumb and it's a shooting pain that goes up my arm a way's. It's sudden and there is no rhyme or reason as to when it happens. I could be working ( I'm a baker) or I just might be sitting watching t.v. Today I went to the Doctor as it has become more frequent and I'm concerned. He said that it is only arthritis and has nothing to do with The Carpal Tunnel. So I started to read about arthritis. While I don't doubt that I have some arthritis, nothing that I have read sounds like what I have been experiencing. Should I be concerned and maybe have some test done to try and find out what is going on?
Those shooting pains seem to be a not uncommon symptom in patients both before and after carpal tunnel surgery. I'm not sure of the explanation though I suspect it is something to do with irritation of the nerve, possibly as it moves around the tendons as the fingers are moved - it's interesting to see just how mobile these structures are on ultrasound imaging. The pains do generally seem to become less frequent with time but sometimes they can be a persistent problem, I'm not really happy to attribute them to arthritis in the absence of some other evidence of a joint problem. JB