Showing posts with label Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Show all posts

Tuesday 10 September 2013

What Happened Today - The Clash, Electric Shocks, Fighting With My Left Hand Again (and Winning)



Before I tell you what's happened it's all fine.

Basically I have had about an hour of increasingly sever electric shocks put through both arms . The doc laughed when I told it was like grabbing an electric fence when you were a kid. He told me he used to do that but stopped when people started looking at him as though he were weird . "Why would you want to grab hold of an electric fence? they would ask" . The answer is to prove that you weren't soft , however when someone asks that question it becomes rhetorical.

Anyway I told him that I knew how to do chords on a guitar and it turned out that he had played cello since he was six , and said there's so way he could switch from left to right hand. I said like Jimi Hendrix could, ah but he was special came back the reply. All the while I 'm getting increasingly severe pulsing electric shocks , giving a mind boggling display on a biggish display , to which the doc annotated highs, lows and means. Although I still couldn't see where this was going, it was interesting, and I was trying to make sense of it. While chatting he was asking what instruments I could play , told I could make noise on electric and acoustic guitars and mandolin, but could play bass with just three fingers! He told me he had a friend who had designed and built his own mandolin!

Conversation then turned to to The Clash , and I mentioned the new Sound System Box set. Turned out one of the guy's previous patients was a friend of Joe Strummer who used to come it and visit her, which resulted in the doc getting a copy of the first Mescaleros album from Joe which he has to this day. We were talking for ages about the Clash and I told him my favourites and he told me his , White Riot , Train in Vain , White Man In Hammersmith Palais and Clampdown all surface and we agreed on the brilliance of the London's Calling album.

Anyway the prognosis is I have bad nerve damage around elbow on right arm , and sever nerve damage on left arm , as well as mild carpal tunnel syndrome on both hands. So I need to do more of what I'm doing , may have to form a band to get some real left hand exercise. The damage is caused by pressure on the elbows, so if you see me resting on my elbows shout at me. Going have sort something with doctor to see what happens next. Need to get some neoprene elbow protectors to force me not to damage my elbows. The human body is good at repairing itself so in theory I might get away without surgery.

The main thing is I know what the problem is , I can start doing something about it now , and its not anything that is life of any part of body threatening . I was worried that they might find something worse , or even nothing, so that , in my opinion is good news so now I can get on with doing something.