My Brachial Plexus Injury Story

Passed the 2 years mark, and very happy to see improvements. Strength is increasing, muscle mass too. From an outside viewer it appears my BPI arm is a healthy strong arm. Hypersensitivity still there. I recently spoke to an old friend whose partner got into a motorcycle accident and had a nerve injury in the leg. Several years later the hypersensitivity still there for that person, I guess this part takes a bit longer to heal. Life goes on as usual. I'm moving apartment next week and had to do a lot of physical movement, including a very tiring round of washing curtains. I was surprise to have muscle soreness on the BPI arm the day after, I guess that's a very good sign. I continue with my exercise routine, and I noticed I developed a bit of bad posture when raising the arm. I suspect this caused me to have a mild pull on the sciatica nerve last December, from what I'm still recovering too. I expect this will improve as it gets easier to raise the arm. The feeling I have w

It has been 2 years now since the surgery. Recently I went to visit a local orthopedic Doctor, to check on some lower back pain I'm having lately. He started to explain me about the nervous system, and I told him about my "training" in this area. He was surprised of how my recovery is going. That made my day! The major noticed improvements are the increase in muscle mass and the strength. The ability to raise the arm has increased noticeably, and the ease of performing day to day tasks. I continue my exercise routine, and I plan to continue for some time. I'm trying to build up the triceps, with a degree of success. My brachioradialis is building up a little more as well. I'm not sure if the muscle build up is currently being held up by the nerve recovery, or perhaps atrophy from the time I couldn't use those muscles. For the day to day, it feels great. I'm getting more confident using the right arm, and now I can use both arms to pull the bicycle up into

  Soon it will be two years since the surgery. Arm movement continues to improve, and feels like soon enough it would allow raise on a more natural motion. Elbow flexion is improving as well, still not forcing it too hard tho. Doing planks is possible again, and sometimes I can throw in a half-way push-up. I'm still doing daily exercises, and functional daily usage of the arm is now more comfortable. Muscle mass keep increasing for all the muscles. The biceps it is still sensible when being pressed. Hypersensitivity seems to be fading, but at a very slow rate. The elbow flexion still looks a bit crooked. Not sure if I can get it straight on my own, but anyway it is a small issue. Incredibly happy with the progress :)

Has been one year and a half since the surgery, and things continue to slowly improve. As usual, visual changes compared to 3 months ago are low profile. However, it doesn't feel that way at all. There's a very significant improvement of strength and usage of the affected arm, slowly making my right arm the dominant arm once again - at least for anything that doesn't require more than 90 degree elevation angle, then it needs some help. I barely keep track of new movements and "milestones" achieved nowadays, not as much because of wearing off from time consuming toil, but mostly because life as normal is mostly achieved at this point. Nevertheless, I still do keep my routine of recovery exercises. With the increased muscle mass in the deltoid, it's visual atrophy is less prominent and cracking noises are less frequent. Hypersensitivity of certain areas of the hand is improving. Mostly remaining in the thumb and lower part of the palm.

Recovery exercises and rehab are very important for this injury. You may quickly realize that it is not feasible to visit a physio every day - it would be challenging, both organizational and cost wise. During my days in occupational therapy, at the beginning of the injury, I noticed the environment and what could be expected of a continuous visit to that hospital (government sponsored). I tried a physio with alleged previous experience with BPI, and the prospect was not any better. On top of the mandatory nerve transfer exercises, I came up with a few series of exercises I've been doing since I was able to slightly move the arm. I don't know if these are the most optimal I could do, but I've heard that people doing physiotherapy on their own still can achieve decent recovery, so I thought I couldn't get too wrong on them. Before being able to trigger functional movement, I believe the most important is to send stimuli to the nerve. This is mainly achieved via the nerve

So 15 months have passed by... And feels great! Using the arm gets easier as time goes by.  Visually, doesn't seem to make a huge difference compared to 12 months mark. But I can feel quite a difference since.  A few weeks ago I started doing small planks, and I think I might be able to do one push up at some point. I started using my right arm to soap my hair and to brush my teeth, generally I try to make it the leading arm again. Some movements are easier than others, and most of them are not fluid yet.  To me, some of the key recovery points are achieving the movements needed to perform my hobbies. I'm a big fan of eating, so there goes one. Running, swimming and cycling are there too (although might not get on a road bike for some time, MTB or city bikes are good for now). The ultimate challenge will be riding my motorbike regularly again - or at least, have the choice to do it if I feel like it. Combined movements (flexion / abduction) are still a challenge and not very ac

During the first 10 months it will be easier to track progress. First contractions, start flexing the elbow, start moving the arm and so on. I found that around the 10th month it was harder to track progress, I felt the arm abduction was very similar week after week. And I often found myself thinking the arm improvements slowed down. Eventually I came up with measurements that showed me otherwise: The numbers are time references (10th month and 1 week, and so on). As you can see, there's a weekly improvement on the measurements. This keeps my motivation up for daily rehab exercises. I think finding your motivation is an essential key for the best final result, which can be 2 to 3 years down the road. What I do is, pick up a few movements I can do, and measure how high I get on them against the closet and mark them with a timestamp. There are other ways to measure progress, for example, how high you get while soaping your hair in the shower or how far you get trying to open that tal