surgery

I'm afraid I don't have any easy answers for that, and I have to say that I would be fairly cautious about predicting the response to surgery at the elbows too. Are they thinking of doing both together, and what did they say about the propsects of success? Are you still using the elbow crutch too? Overall you seem to have considerably more pain than average in association with your nerve problems which worries me a little - in case we are missing something, but I can't think of anything immediately. JB

They are going to do both arms at 6 weeks apart. He said success rate was really good but if I don't have it done then they will only get worse. I am using a walking stick as suggested by you at the moment but it doesn't support me very well. Fibromyalgia which I have makes your nerve endings more painful so maybe that's why I'm having more problems I don't know.

Regards

Hmm! I wish I had data of the same quality I have for carpal tunnel surgery for the outcome of ulnar nerve surgery at the elbow. The state of the medical literature on the subject is comparatively poor. I don't suppose they qualified exactly what they meant by 'really good'. In my favourite study of the outcome of ulnar nerve surgery (Beekman 2004), of 28 patients/arms 7 were cured, 10 improved, 7 unchanged and 4 worse at least 4 months after surgery. JB

I said to him that my mum was a bit concerned about me having the operation as it's not nice to have and not very successful but he said he don't know why she said that as it's a very successful operation but if I don't have it done now it will only get worse.

We shall see. There are not a lot of alternatives to choose from. I've always been one of those people who likes to be pleasantly surprised by a better than expected outcome rather than someone who is disappointed by a poor result when cure has been promised. JB