r/carpaltunnel

Hey all, kind of at my wit's end here and needing some advice.

First off, a little backstory:

A little over a month ago I started experiencing pretty intense pain in my thumb of my right hand. I went to my primary care doc, and they thought I had some tendonitis or muscle strain injury, so they prescribed my some oral steroids. Well, a week or so past and no improvement. In fact, my right hand started hurting overall. I started feeling pain in my wrist and burning and tinglyness in my thumb, index, and middle finger. It got pretty aggravating, so I decided to go to a ortho doc that specialized in hands.

Well, they diagnosed me with trigger thumb *and* carpel tunnel and gave me a steroid shot for my thumb and told me to start wearing a wrist brace at night. Well, I'm now about two weeks after that appointment and can say the steroid shot didn't do anything for my thumb pain, and the wrist brace seemingly doesn't seem to do anything either. I tried with the splint inside at first, but that kept making my wrist pain worse, digging into parts of my arm, and surprisingly yielding bad elbow pain during the night and in the morning. Well, I took the splint out after reading some similar things here on reddit, and while that has made the side effects of the brace go away (ish), it doesn't seem to be actively making my pain better. I still have terrible pain in the morning, sometimes it feels like my thumb is on fire. Other times I have extreme soreness in my three fingers (thumb, index, and middle). My wrist feels stiff often.

I have tried splinting, I have tried the steroid shot, I have tried changing my desk setup at work to be more ergonomic, I've tried icing/heat, resting my hand, etc, but nothing seems to be making this any better. I don't know if it's *worse* than it was, but it's certainly becoming a constant source of pain in my life and I don't know what to do.

I have a follow-up at the ortho hand doc in 5 weeks. I also have a follow-up with my primary care this friday for something I think is unrelated (I started getting tingling in my feet lately, which has come on near the same time as these symptoms, pretty much soon after I got the steroid shot).

Does anyone have any advice for pain relief? I feel like everything I try does nothing, or has a chance of making it worse. Do I really need to just rest my wrist/fingers for a month or something? I have a job where I have to use a keyboard and mouse ~8 hours a day, so it's not something I can just quit doing easily. Should I keep wearing the brace at night even though the pain is still there in the morning when I get up?

The only thing that I will say gives me relief is a cold pack, but it's pretty temporary. I also sometimes take ibuprofen in the mornings when it's really bad. It doesn't help *much*, but any little bit of relief helps. The other small thing that seems to help is some mild wrist stretches, but again, these are pretty temporary and minor relief, but I've been doing them in the mornings when I get up. Is this just a long road to relief? Should I keep doing what I'm doing? Should I add anything?

Thanks.

Hi there everyone, I have carpal tunnel in both of my hands/wrists. I find that the pain is more so in my wrist than in my hands but I did go get scans and stuff done and I do have carpal tunnel in both of my hands. They say that apparently it’s meant to be more painful in your hands, but I find that the pain in my wrist is a lot worse. I struggled with it for about two years before I went and got scanned done. I would wake up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain and my wrist in hand would have pins and needles and would just go completely numb. I would have to try and sleep with my arm off the side of the bed so that the blood could flow down to that area. She sleeping was a bit of a nightmare. Since then I’ve gotten braces for both of my wrists and I wear them to bed every single night and they do help, but sometimes when I’ve overused my wrist the pain isn’t helped by wearing braces. I don’t know if anyone else experiences this but when I do something for a long period of time like painting or doing something where I’m needing to lift heavy weights like yesterday my partner and I were moving a bunch of rocks on our property after that my wrist and hand on my left side were in so much pain. I couldn’t do anything yesterday with my left hand. I couldn’t pick anything up. It was throbbing throughout the night and I was in so much pain. I needed to take painkillers in order to sleep. These are just things that I don’t hear people talking about when they say they have carpal tunnel. I’ve looked online and looked at all these videos on what carpal tunnel is and I just never see anyone talking about what I go through with the carpal tunnel. I wondering if anyone else experiences stuff like this and my real question is is there anything I can do to help with the side effects that come with carpal tunnel. I want to be able to help my partner by doing jobs with him like moving heavy rocks or doing some painting every once in awhile but it makes me feel like I can’t do those things without my carpal tunnel totally destroying my hand and rests and then for the next week I can’t do anything. Is there anything I can be doing to stop that from happening or is this just how it is now. Has anyone found that they’ve been able to soothe the pain in anyway apart from just taking painkillers. When I did go to the doctors and got my scans for the carpal tunnel they did say that the only two solutions were either a steroid needle or to get surgery on them and at the time none of those options really sounded good to me. I’m not quite sure how I feel about getting steroids injected into me and that’s not a permanent fix to them either but from what I’ve heard the surgery doesn’t always work. Anyway, any helpful advice or tips would be appreciated.

So I've gotten the shots before. I got them a couple years ago maybe like 4 or 5 years ago. But honestly I'm really nervous. I hate the feeling of them putting it into the nerve but I know that it has to be done.

I'm hoping this is the last time I have to do this cuz I don't want to do it again.

How do you guys feel after the second shot or do you feel like you've had to get the third or get the surgery?

I was really set on getting the surgery but my husband said that the healing time is going to be too long and too long of a wait before they'll have an appointment for me anyway.

It's getting hard to use my computer. Which would be the best or most sustainable? I thought of mousepads with wrist support but my friend ecommended ergonomical mouses too.

I had bilateral carpal tunnel release in 2023. After stitches came out, I had 3 glorious weeks of no pain until I suddenly had nerve pain. Been on gabapentin since, acclimated to my new normal. A year ago, I went back to school for my masters and the typing for notes and papers ran me back into the ground and I barely finished the quarter and scheduled with the surgeon hoping there was something that could be done cause I don't particularly WANT to have another surgery. He was really quick to dismiss my concerns as "residual pain", despite this being new. The last 3 years I would consider residual pain. This is different. I'm not able to do things I could reasonably do 2 months ago like drive long distances or use weight machines at the gym. He said injections wouldn't be a thing he'd do since I already had surgery, and he literally told me to come back when I have grey hair and that I could try gabapentin for the nerve pain. A medication I've BEEN on for 3 years. Are injections truly not an option? Do I just have to run my hands back down to where I couldn't even hold things anymore like it's 2023 again? Am I just stuck like this?? I'm only 34!

Feeling kinda doomed and thinking about calling to get a second opinion but not sure if it's worth it or not. Kinda just feeling hopeless about it all.

I’m really nervous. I was having a couple good months because I have mostly been working in the office. Two weeks ago I had to go back on the floor (mechanical work, welding and fabricating) to train someone who is new. I’m in really rough shape now. I could barely cook breakfast this morning. It’s also my dominant hand.

I’m mostly nervous because I love working out. I know that I won’t even able to do that immediately, but when can I expect to be working out at the same intensity as I have been lately? Mind you it’s even currently painful at times now working out but I’m still hitting pretty heavy weights. I’m also nervous because my carpal tunnel area pops every time I close my fingers, it has for years. And they’re telling me the surgery may or may not fix that they don’t know. If it doesn’t will I still have pain? I would think so…

Any pre-op and post op advice is welcome. If not, wish me luck!

Keep getting refused an ultrasound. So fed up with asshole orthopedic’s who think they’re god because they went to college.

I believe I have early carpal tunnel coming on, and purchased a wrist splint from Walgreens. It seems like a pretty standard one with a hole for my thumb to stick out, but I find it relatively tight and uncomfortable. When I wake up in the morning there's a pretty noticeable mark around my thumb from it.

Does anyone happen to know a good wrist splint that doesn't involve the thumb? Hopefully one I could just get on Amazon. Thanks.

I developed carpal tunnel in May due to an overuse injury playing my clarinet as a music major. I've been dealing with the pain since.

I want to admit, that I am at fault here for my treatment. The official diagnosis in my notes is overuse injury in thumb as well as mild carpal tunnel. The past few months, I have been doing little rest, which has been his primary recommendation. Of course with little rest, this hasn't helped much. I've gotten steroid injections, as well as scheduled meloxicam. I've also been occasionally doing at home physical therapy exercises. I haven't been doing them as much as I should have, but they also can be painful to do at times. I also have a hard time sticking up for myself. I tend to downplay my pain and avoid telling all the details,, because I'm scared of being vulnerable and that I won't be believed.

In the past few appointments, I have stated that yes, primarily the pain is in my thumb. However, I have mentioned there is definitely pain in my wrist shooting up into my arm. It feels very tender, and it is extremely painful. I'm not an expert, but I feel like this might call for some sort of testing for carpal tunnel.

He has said there's nothing really that can be done anymore, and I feel hopeless. I have to leave work early, because I can't get task done. I'm frantically changing my schedule for the school semester, because I realistically can't see myself succeeding with this amount of pain I told him that I'm at a seven or a 7.5 on the pain scale at worst, but I still feel like I'm not exactly being listened to.

I got the results back for an MRI on my hand, and everything came back fine. I have a follow up appointment with him next week, and I bringing someone with me to help me be direct since I have such a hard time with it.

I've really been hitting resting hard a lot harder the past week, and I've noticed the pain in my thumb is slightly less intense. However, the pain in my wrist is still prominent and very painful, and sometimes it feels tingly and numb, especially in my index middle and thumb finger.

I feel ashamed for not acting sooner and taking this more seriously, but I also feel frustrated. I'm considering seeing a new doctor if this appointment doesn't work out.

I am 8 days post surgery and I so confused on what to wear on my hand. I don’t want to leave it open because I’m afraid of catching the stitches on something, so I’ve been changing the gauze pad out and rewrapping my hand in the cloth wrap and ace bandage I left the surgery center with. It’s been working thus far as it’s preventing me from moving my wrist too much, especially at night. (I’m still doing hand exercises and moving my fingers a lot) The paperwork I was sent home with provided me with very little insight and I’m so far post surgery I feel like an idiot messaging my surgeon. TIA

I got diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome in 2022 one month before delivering my baby. It was very bad all the way until 12 months post partum. I've had it ever since but it has dramatically decreased to the point where I only get it when handling my phone or laptop or pushing a stroller or biking for a long time. Otherwise I don't really get it. I also don't wear any braces at night as I sleep a certain way where I don't feel it. They've done tests when my symptoms were bad showing I had moderate carpal tunnel and I've gotten steroid shots previously which cured all symptoms but came back. If I were to get pregnant again, should I get carpal tunnel release surgery?