My Brachial Plexus Injury Story

A few months after the surgery is when good things will start to happen. So slowly that will be difficult to appreciate, but they are happening. From this moment onward, you will start to notice that some of your atrophied muscles are slowly becoming less bony. This doesn't mean that the muscle is back at this point, but just a tiny bit. Nerve pain might be still at its peak. This could last for a while. Around this time you will start to observe small contractions when activating the innervating nerves for the elbow flexion. For example, with Oberlin transfer, making a fist will cause some feeling around the biceps. Those sensations will soon become small but visible contractions. From there, you will observe small movements but don't expect any anti gravitational force on elbow flexion anytime before 4 months after the surgery. Depending on what transfer was done for your supraspinatus, it is possible that you will observe changes there a few weeks or months after this point.

At this point the surgeons have cut about about half of selected working nerves and placed them in position to energize inactive muscles. There will be a decent amount of pills and you'll be feeling like badly hangover for a week or so. Your fingertips will have some degree of numbness. It happens frequently. For double Oberlin transfer, you may feel some degree of weakness in your hand, specially in the index finger. Weakness should recover in the upcoming months, so try to not worry too much about it. In another post I will cover my thoughts about single or double Oberlin transfer. It is possible that some new areas in your hand become hypersensitive. For me it was the lower part of the palm. This is supposed to go away with time, for me after 10 months it lowered the threshold just a bit. You'll be in immobilization period for one month. Depending on your Doctor, you will either be told to have the arm tightly immobilized, or to allow just a little bit of movement. At any ca

You will notice changes in your body. Both before, and after the surgery. Of course, it all depends on what kind of injury you have - what nerves are affected and how. For similar injuries to mine (c5 c6 rupture), this is what I noticed for the first 3 months. First, you will start to notice occasional cracking in the shoulder when there's some induced movement (i.e. when you are using your other arm to position the affected limb in a comfortable position). This is your deltoid getting atrophied and not holding your arm as it should. This will start a few weeks after the accident, and depending on your muscle mass it could be noticeable for 2 to 3 weeks. After that you might occasionally still notice it, but the arm is loose enough to be mostly out of its original position. Eventually you will notice there's almost no deltoid left. For me it was after 2 months or so, but it depends on how muscular you were before the accident (I wasn't). If a muscle doesn't receive nerv

For some time, the main source of pain might be neuropathy. Unfortunately, I have endured a good deal of nerve pain. It is not always the case from what I've read. One year later, I do still have occasional moments of intense pain, but nothing compared to those first months. The doctors prescribe Gabapentin for this. It rarely worked for me, but actually doesn't work for many people. However, I learned a few things along the way that really helped me manage the pain. A note on this, in avulsion cases there's something called 'phantom limb' pain, which probably doesn't relate to what I experienced. There might be a moment when sensitivity nerves start to repair themselves, causing a miss adjustment on how things are usually felt on the skin touch - a mild wind flow could be felt like a cat scratch. For hypersensitive sensation on the skin, I found warmth helped greatly. Hot showers helped to calm down certain areas, but make sure you have the softest towel to dry

The two best words that can describe my first weeks of injury: confusion and pain. I don't know if this is just coming across the wrong people. After crossing the border with Malaysia, I went straight to the General Practitioner who sent me right away to hospital emergencies. They started their tests. One of the male nurses (or doctors, I can't remember) was asking me questions about the accident, and he mentioned I might need some micro surgery. Right away he checked for my sensitivity on the C5 and C6 sensory areas. He explained to me I had a brachial plexus injury, and that I could google it to get more details (seriously). He gave me meds and set up an appointment to see a hand specialist a few weeks later. He gave me a specific medication for the arm pain. I mentioned I did't have any pain in the arm. You will - he predicted. Then I was on my way home. Fuck yes I had pain the next day. It was like someone was stabbing me with an electrified knife all around the arm. At

Of course, it had to be a motorcycle accident. I've been riding in places like India, Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. I never thought I would meet my first accident in the quite roads of a Malaysian village - my frequent riding grounds. In a dedicated post I will cover how is it to crash in a village in Malaysia. For locals might be the norm, but for a foreigner the experience is a surprise, to say the least. The accident involved another motorcycle doing a sudden right turn. Full break put me in the inverted wheelie position. The crash sent me away a memorable distance, according to witnesses. Luckily I had a good jacket on me. The shoulder protection was nearly gone, a big scratch on the side of my Arai helmet. Boots, riding pants, gloves and even my smartwatch took a hit as well. "Cousin ! Cousin !" those words brought me back from a strange dream. I don't remember being able to see anything other that white light, but I do remember asking my cousin what

A Bachial Plexus Injury (shortened as BPI) is when there is damage on nerves going from your spine, all the way inside your arm (aka Brachial Plexus). Usually by an excessive pull, but it can happen trough other situations like knife or gunshot injuries. The nerves composing the BP are C5, C6, C7, C8 and T1. Each one is independently, or in combination with others, responsible for movements and sensory areas of certain parts of your arm. For example, is C5 is damaged, arm abduction and sensation over the shoulder are affected. The resulting injury can go from weakness or numbness, to total paralysis and loss of sensitivity of affected areas. If you are reading this, I hope it is just out of curiosity. It could also be that are you ran into a similar situation I did 1 year ago, and google searches led you here. If that's the case, it's going to be fine, things will get better. You'll have to work hard for it, but you'll get your life back. People around you might think &