My Carpal Tunnel

My Carpal Tunnel first appeared back in 1999 when I was pregnant with my first child - I did a lot of driving and would get pins and needles in my hands and fingers.

This went away when I gave birth to my first child and didn't return until my 2nd pregnancy - though slightly worse this time I would get complete numbness of the hands sometime when driving long distance and at night I would get pains in my fingers and needed to wear wrist splints.

Again this went away after the birth of my second child but still got slight symptoms when driving long distance though not as bad as when I was pregnant.

When pregnant with my 3rd child the Carpal Tunnel was so painful that I needed steroid injections in the most painful wrist, which gave relief for around 6 weeks at a time until I returned to the doctor begging for more!

After the birth of my 3rd child the symptoms didn't really go away, and when I started Depo-Provera contraception injections 3 monthly I noticed it worsened and was worse at special time of the month with my cycles.

Despite wearing wrist splints at night and taking Diclofenac and paracetamol I was struggling to cope with my Carpal Tunnel. I also found that after starting an anti-smoking drug called Champix my symptoms worsened so bad that I would wake at night in pain and was prescribed Oramorth.

After taking up knitting I found that after a few rows I would completely lose all feeling in most of my fingers so returned to the doctor to ask for more steroid injections.

The doctor refused to give me more injections as apparently it's not good for you to have too many - so I was referred to Orthapedics for tests.

Orthapedics did some low level electric shock type tests to test the level of my Carpal Tunnel and recommended I have surgery to relieve it.

I thought that documenting my experience might help others going through the same thing and may help people worried about the surgery.

The surgery was booked for the following month and I spoke to a friend who had also had it done - unfortunately she had had a bad experience, the surgery had not worked for her and had actually made her symptoms worse!!

Luckily after that I spoke to many people who had also had the surgery and everyone else was very positive about it and said that it was worthwhile - phew!!