I need help figuring out why my arm and hand have been in pain and disconfort.

[ConnorWolf]

I am desperate for help. I have been suffering from really bad right arm and hand pain and discomfort for over two years. It's worse when writing (like now), using a mouse, in the cold or when the weather changes. I have gotten acupuncture over the past two months which seems to help but there is a wall I am hitting.  

I have seen several doctors who have diagnosed me with different things like tendonitis, nerve damage and carpel tunnel syndrome. But none of their solutions have seemed to work.

The current doctor I am seeing gave me a nerve test which came up with nothing. So he thinks it's carpel tunnel. But the cortisone shot he gave me a few weeks back didn't help.

I am seeing him again next week. But he is not all that helpful so I want to come in with some possible answers and information that might help move this process along. I am running out of time. I have been out of work and I need this nightmare to be over. Please help. Any information on what I might have or things I should ask or anything like that would be so helpful. Thank you.

[GBS_patient]

Does it feel like it could be an infection, but doctors tell you it isn't?  I had decades of CRPS pain.  It started around an arm implant for birth control and kept me from keeping jobs because I couldn't repetitively type.  Later I had pain around an IUD that spread as fibromyalgia.  But really it started in my knee at the site of a prior skiing injury as a child- it just didn't need narcotics at that stage.   its not the mainstream doctors' job to help you figure this out.  they may help with the symptoms, but regular medicine does not treat chronic infection with antibiotics.  My pain would hit harder each time, progress over months, then years, and then retreat increasingly slowly and incompletely Until... 5 years ago I got an additional GBS= strep group B infection, bladder and then several vaginal.  it was sepsis and if I were in otherwise poor health would have killed me then, but lingered for 3 years as my heart was having 'attacks'- I was overrun with Lyme disease, Bartonella to be specific.  Mainstream medicine was of little help and doctors poorly acknowledged the illness, let alone the cause.  it was a new acquaintance of mine who had lyme, who said ' sounds like Lyme'.  her insight saved my life.  See the documentary  Under our SKin on Amazon, the trailer is free for an eye opening insight about Lyme.  see an LLMD for testing and treatment.  good luck!

[Paxiled]

Don't know if it's carpal tunnel or not, but it does sound like it might be from poor posture while using a computer and writing as that's when it hurts the most and that's one of the most common modern ways people are injuring their hands and necks (using cell phones with the head tilted down all the time is another).   Are the docs you've been seeing specialists or just your regular doctors?  Just checking, because I certainly wouldn't want a cortis0ne shot from a regular doc!  The problem with cortisone, besides it being dangerous if you do it too often, is that it's useless if you don't know where to place the needle.  Without seeing the inflammation on some diagnostic test like an MRI or X-ray or ultrasound and the like where would you know to put it?  if you saw a neurologist and they gave you an EMG test they aren't particularly effective in finding nerve problems.  They are mostly useful for ruling out things like Lupus, which in that area is unlikely to be the problem.  What I'd recommend, given so much has failed, is to make sure you're seeing hand specialists, and something to consider is to see not a regular physical therapist but an occupational therapist, they're better with hand pain.  Found this out when my wife had hand pain.  They were considering cortisone in trigger points, but she opted for the occupational therapist and fixed the problem.  Peace.