Pinched Nerve pain in my right arm

In My Humble Opinion
1

It started about a week ago, I woke up with numb fingers. That’s not unusual, however, because I’m the sort of person who curls up a tight ball when I sleep, cutting off my nerves. But it was different this time, because it couldn’t shake out. So for a day it was on it’s own shifting back and forth between numbness and no numbness. The following night, however, it shifted into numbness and pain. Severe, debilitating, holy-fuck-what-the-hell pain.

So I got to Googlin’. I learned that there are three primary nerves running down your arm and different ones cause different pain. That first night when the pain was absolutely crazy, it was the ulnar nerve, because the pain was in the pinkie and finger next to it. But then the pain shifted to my thumb, index and sometimes middle fingers and that’s where it’s been since.

It isn’t constant, and it is generally much-better-to-all-gone during the day when I’m very active doing a variety of tasks.

The absolute worst it gets is when I’m in bed on my right side trying to touch my ipad. Lying down seems bad generally and I wake up in more pain than I went to bed in all the time.

I have worn a neck collar and wrapped my arm in a towel to prevent bending. The problem is that so far I cannot seem to isolate the precise positions that will aggravate/relieve it with certainty, so I’m left floundering trying different things all the time.

I’ve taken to sucking down a lot of ibuprofen because a friend of mine had the same without any help from modern medicine until he was given extremely high-powered anti-inflammatory drugs.

So any suggestions that don’t involve money for a doctor (no Obamacare for me yet…) are welcome, even or especially just some suggestions about how to figure out where the damn pinch IS…neck,back, armpit, elbow, wrist…? Since aggravation/relief responses are somewhat gradual, it’s very hard to determine whether it’s the position I’m in right now, or the one I was in 3 minutes ago?

Thanks…

2

When I get that it helps sometimes if I can get 2 or 3 5 min massages every day. Even if you just have a buddy that can do a massage for you just a couple of minutes. It can’t hurt. I have trouble with my neck muscles tensing up causing my nerve to get pinched somehow.

3

I’ve got a similar issue, although only the ulnar nerve is affected and it is only numbness at night. I don’t have pain or muscle wasting. Doctors have been pretty much useless to me, even with insurance all I have to show for my problem is a string of misdiagnosis, braces I could buy on amazon for 1/10 the price and bills.

The brachial plexus runs from the cervical spine through the scalenes, under the clavicle, under the pec minor and into the arm. There are so many places (I think a dozen or more) where the nerve can be pinched either by bones or muscles.

A chiropractor ‘may’ be able to help you, but that is only if the problem is in your cervical spine. I had an incompetent massage therapist dislocate a cervical vertebrae, and had to see my chiro to have it fixed.

Does bending your elbow make it worse? If so then the compression is likely at the elbow. Does holding your arm over your head make it worse? If so then the compression could be at the pec minor.

4

You very likely have a pinched nerve in the thoracic region of your spine. Only way to confirm this is with a MRI or CT scan and a nerve conductivity study. Physical therapy can correct most cases.

5

I would think this would be a pinched nerve in the cervical region of the spine, as arm nerves don’t go downward into the chest, do they?

It might take a half a minute for a different neck position to have an effect, which can make it hard to figure things out if you don’t account for the delay.

Cervically induced arm or hand pain tends to get better if you turn the head toward the side of the body opposite the painful arm, and if you lean it toward that side, and if you lean it forward. So if your left arm hurts, try to touch your chin to your right collarbone, and vice versa.

Of course, if there’s a nerve pinch elsewhere, the neck shouldn’t matter.

This is all if you don’t mind eventual paralysis. If you do, figure out a way to see a proper doctor.

-some guy on the internet

6

The brachial plexus does go under the pec minor in the chest which can cause entrapment.

As far as seeing a doctor, I can only speak from personal experience but many don’t see ‘too’ good at this kind of issue. To get a proper diagnosis, you probably need to see a neurologist, have MRIs and CTs done, have nerve conduction studies done, etc. The MDs I have seen just want to assume entrapment is occurring at whatever point is the most common source of entrapment. Finding the actual point of entrapment is hard. It is double hard when there are multiple points, and as a result treating one will improve symptoms, but not make the problem go away.

That has been my situation. I have entrapment at the anterior scalene and pectoralis minor, at minimum. Stretching those regions has improved my situation, but not made it go away so my nerve is entrapped at at least 3 points. However because of my stretching routine, there are fewer arm positions that cause numbness now compared to in the past before I did my stretches. So I have seen some improvement I guess.

On the subject, for the OP, I noticed when I switched from an inner spring mattress to a memory foam mattress that also helped with numbness.

7

I had this issue for a while, and the doctors did all kinds of tests, until one old guy told me to buy a new mattress and a side sleeper pillow. So I guess everyone’s head is really really heavy ( I sure didn’t think mine was) and sleeping with your head on your arm can cause this.

8

All this talk of muscles and entrapment has me thinking of multiple related issues:

I have quadrilateral space syndrome, an entrapment issue where a nerve passes through a four-sided gap between several muscles and tendons, kind of behind the armpit. It’s kind of rare, and almost always occurs in athletes in their 20s and 30s who are in overhand sports and stressing things to an extreme degree. I am twice that age, and have never played any overhand sports at all (I’m more of a hiker). It was such a surprising finding that multiple doctors tried multiple tests, but it was confirmed with two nerve conduction studies (BIG losses in signal) and an MRI showing an atrophied teres minor muscle. I wonder if I’m the only guy in the world who is so far out of the typical demographic and yet has such a clear case.

I also had rotator cuff issues on the same side, and they dug out a bunch of solid chunks of calcium deposit, which is also very unusual, as the deposit is usually more of a paste. Mid-procedure, the surgeon actually invited a bunch of people into the OR just to see this freakish situation.

And, I also have nerve root entrapment problems in my neck, on both sides but worse on that side, with arm and hand pain and numbness and weakness plus unfortunately a bit of damage to the spinal cord per se, and have had C5-6-7 fused and am looking at a C4-5 prosthetic disk implant some day. Plus, they used chunks of dead guy for the fusion, so of course my neck is haunted now, but that’s really another matter altogether.

Anyhoo, the point is, they tell me that it is pretty common to have multiple problems that exacerbate one another in this region. Lots of orthopedic/neurological problems are isolated, but not so exclusively in this area.

Final point: it is good to remember that orthopedic surgery may not make you better, but it will definitely make you different.

9

My bad! A pinched nerve in the thoracic spine causes (sometimes) severe pain in the area beneath the shoulder blade. Pain and numbness that radiates down the arm to the hand and fingers is from the C-spine. I should know better, I have a titanium plate and screws from a C - 5, 6, 7 laminectomy.

10

The nerves going to your hands leave the spinal cord at the lower end of the cervical spine.

In general, the radial nerve (thumb and index finger) exits the spine at C5-C6, the medial nerve (middle fingers) comes from C6-C7, and the ulnar nerve (pinky and ring fingers) exits at C7-T1. There is some overlap and “cross-wiring” of the nerves to the hands and fingers,so it is possible for a C6-C7 problem to affect your thumb or your pinky, and not just the middle finger.

My neurosurgeon describes C7-T1, aka the C8 nerve root, as “hand central” which makes it sound like if you’re having problems with all fingers, it’s apt to be the culprit, if your problems are at the spine, rather than entrapment or pinching elsewhere.

As the owner of an artificial disc at C5-C6, a multi-level lumbar fusion, and in the next month or so, a probable microdiskectomy at C7-T1, I can comfortably say that you will probably end up learning way more about nerves and anatomy than you ever dreamed about.

11

I had a laminectomy over 20 years ago, my tricep had gone dead along with numbness in my left hand. I believe it was c 6 they ground away. Feeling never came back in my fingers all the way but the pain is mostly gone or at least very tolerable.