Weak thumbs.....

We went to the neurosurgeon this morning to talk about Kristen's arm pains.

You know how you go to the doctor and there are certain things they do so many times that they go through them fast and effective like? For instance listening to your back when you cough, or looking in your ear. They do it fast because they know what they are looking for. The neurosurgeon was doing his normal stuff to check out how Kristen's overall neuro-health was holding up. It was funny because they were things I was not used to seeing, so the quick speed he went through them made them feel like he was playing "Simon-says". He had her walk, then walk on her heels, then just on her toes, then one foot in front of the other, then stand with both feet together, then with both arms out, hold your hands this way, now put your wrists together, push now pull, let me thump you with this here and there, now I am going to pull on your thumbs, hmmm your thumbs are weak. The weak thumbs did her in! I tried to throw in my own seemingly pointless actions for her to complete, it looked fun, I said bawk like a chicken, now hop on one foot. I waited until the doctor was busy writing in his note pad again, I did get a brief chicken wing move from her while he wasn't looking.

She has been diagnosed with carpel tunnel syndrome exasperated by the high fluid retention that is normal during pregnancy. She is going to be wearing braces at night to keep her wrists straight, helping the fluid get to where it needs to go. Tomorrow morning she will be going in for shock therapy! Just kidding(almost), they do send a small electrical pulse from the forearm and count how many milliseconds it takes to be received down past the wrist. Normal time is 2 milliseconds or so, sometimes with severe carpel tunnel it can take up to 7 milliseconds to travel the same distance, since the nerves are being pinched basically. It will take about a week to get the results back. If it comes back as a mild or moderate case than we will just use the braces, especially at night. If the test shows severe than we need her to have a surgery to relieve the tension or she could suffer permanent nerve damage, even losing use of her thumbs, making it difficult to hitchhike or climb rope ladders. He knows she is pregnant of course. He said since it is a local anesthetic the danger to the baby is extremely low, Kristen wouldn't even get knocked out at all. We will know more next Thursday. Even though the nerves are suffering in her wrists, the nerves run of course from the spine, which is why the pain is going up both arms, both wrists having issues.

We went to get the proper braces in a couple of different stores, even a specialty store, They all had one right, or one left, never both in the same brand, and always just one of either... kind of funny. Apparently everyone needs one brace right now, there's been a mad rush. So the specialty store has them ordered and we should be able to get them tomorrow.

Kristen has always had frequent tension headaches, he poked and prodded and found that there was one area on her face not as responsive and sensitive as the other side of her face. He said that it is pretty normal with sufferers of tension headaches. He prescribed B-2, says that it often helps with the headaches.

We went to the hospital last night to peek at our friend's new baby who decided to climb out a week or so early. Even though it caused us to cancel out Park City plans, she is cute enough to be worth the hassle. Everyone is healthy and doing great. She had her eyes wide open, and was very attentive, very cute. She looked perfect in the little hat with a pink skull and cross bones we got her. He took a pic, I'll post it as soon as he emails it.