Hi Guys,
About 6 weeks ago I pulled/twisted something in my back. I wasn't doing anything special. I was just getting into my car. It hurt pretty bad, but I wrote it off as having pulled a muscle or something since I had been weight training pretty frequently. I took it easy for a few days, used some icy hot, etc.
The harshest pain went away after a few days, but I was left with what felt like a knot in my upper back just below my neck between my shoulder blades. It never seemed to go away and has only gotten worse. Yesterday morning I noticed it really throbbing.. Or at least, it was just reaching it's worse point yet.
It was hard for me to get out of bed because I had to sit up and doing so just completely crushed my back. It hurt so bad.
Later, I felt like my left arm was tingling.. almost like your leg feels when it falls asleep. I could still move my fingers, but my pinky and index finger were acting really funny. I'm a guitarist so I'm really keen on finger movement and the lower two fingers just felt like they were hardly there. I certainly knew that if I picked up a guitar I would fumble.
I went to a chiropractor yesterday. No referall, just the closest one to where i worked. I work downtown st. louis and there's a pain clinic down the street.
The chiropractor thinks I have pressure in my spine where one of the main nerves in my arms leads out from, and that pressure is causing the pain and interfering with the nerve. He showed me a similar picture as below, and traced where that nerve should come from my spine. When he pressed down on that area by my spine, it hurt like hell. So he was pretty sure he found the problem area.
It would be the lower nerve in the first picture (ulner), which would explain why my arm felt weird and I could really feel it in my pinky and index finger. In the second pic it shows where it leads into the neck, and thats exactly where my back/neck hurts.
He said he should be able to relieve some pressure after a few adjustments which include massage therapy and electrotherapy. I had this work done previously after an accident and had whiplash, and it worked wonders. So I have high hopes that it will help.
He said though that if things don't get better after a few visits, or at least show some improvement and that the therapy is working, I'll need to go get x-rays. He said he's tempted to send me for xrays already but since I'm so close by and my next two visits will be tomorrow and monday, we'll wait until after that. He said he'll need to make a decision on if treatment is working or not fairly quickly because if it doesn't I could potentially damage the nerve.
I have insurance and my copay is $10 per visit.. so please don't thread crap about chiropracty being a crack science.
Question is.. does this sound right? It seems pretty clear cut.. pinched nerve, doc found it, symptoms line up with assessement.. I'm just second guessing simply because several nurse friends were saying the numb arm could be a sign of an oncoming stroke.
About 6 weeks ago I pulled/twisted something in my back. I wasn't doing anything special. I was just getting into my car. It hurt pretty bad, but I wrote it off as having pulled a muscle or something since I had been weight training pretty frequently. I took it easy for a few days, used some icy hot, etc.
The harshest pain went away after a few days, but I was left with what felt like a knot in my upper back just below my neck between my shoulder blades. It never seemed to go away and has only gotten worse. Yesterday morning I noticed it really throbbing.. Or at least, it was just reaching it's worse point yet.
It was hard for me to get out of bed because I had to sit up and doing so just completely crushed my back. It hurt so bad.
Later, I felt like my left arm was tingling.. almost like your leg feels when it falls asleep. I could still move my fingers, but my pinky and index finger were acting really funny. I'm a guitarist so I'm really keen on finger movement and the lower two fingers just felt like they were hardly there. I certainly knew that if I picked up a guitar I would fumble.
I went to a chiropractor yesterday. No referall, just the closest one to where i worked. I work downtown st. louis and there's a pain clinic down the street.
The chiropractor thinks I have pressure in my spine where one of the main nerves in my arms leads out from, and that pressure is causing the pain and interfering with the nerve. He showed me a similar picture as below, and traced where that nerve should come from my spine. When he pressed down on that area by my spine, it hurt like hell. So he was pretty sure he found the problem area.
It would be the lower nerve in the first picture (ulner), which would explain why my arm felt weird and I could really feel it in my pinky and index finger. In the second pic it shows where it leads into the neck, and thats exactly where my back/neck hurts.
He said he should be able to relieve some pressure after a few adjustments which include massage therapy and electrotherapy. I had this work done previously after an accident and had whiplash, and it worked wonders. So I have high hopes that it will help.
He said though that if things don't get better after a few visits, or at least show some improvement and that the therapy is working, I'll need to go get x-rays. He said he's tempted to send me for xrays already but since I'm so close by and my next two visits will be tomorrow and monday, we'll wait until after that. He said he'll need to make a decision on if treatment is working or not fairly quickly because if it doesn't I could potentially damage the nerve.
I have insurance and my copay is $10 per visit.. so please don't thread crap about chiropracty being a crack science.
Question is.. does this sound right? It seems pretty clear cut.. pinched nerve, doc found it, symptoms line up with assessement.. I'm just second guessing simply because several nurse friends were saying the numb arm could be a sign of an oncoming stroke.
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