I have carpal tunnel plus RA

Wow thank you for that fast reply. I had many discussions with 2 different specialists who said the steroid shots cannot not be used on me. Said its because of a tendon rip i had 6 years ago from a  fall plus the fact that my diabetes jumbs around too much (but that part is getting better). I think it also may have somehing to do the hi blood pressure med i am taking? (Cozaar). Did I have the nerve test done and initially he said this exactly: "some impingement consistent with CTS". But the other specialist read the same results and said the test (some or all of it?? I dont know) was not done properly. I dont know if that means it looks better or worse for me! So if anybody asks me I say i didn't have the test.

They are just being very cautious in saying you cannot have steroid injection. We inject many diabetic patients, usually with no more than a couple of days slightly highr blood glucose. Hypertension is not a risk (though it might be an issue for oral steroids) and I personally would not worry about an old tendon injury, especially if it was not a tendon break at the wrist - where was it? If you have a copy of your NCS I'm happy to tell you what I think. Dr J Bland

Hello and thank you again. I completely agree - both said they are being very cautious. Trughfully they scared me a bit. My tendon rip was called "FPL" --sort of at my wrist crease. It made a huge lump and I couldnt move my hand much for weeks. Rehab took about 4 months and even then it took over a year to feel normal again. Aactually, it never felt as it once did because Im definately weaker. Maybe thats why any needle going in there scares me AND them. I will see about the NCS report. Its on printout paper so i have to get my daughter to scan it for you to send over. Thank you for that.

At least that demomstrates nicely that flexor tendons can rupture even without steroids! Presumably the RA is the predisposing factor there as that can cause inflammation around the tendons itself. If you do have rheumatoid tenosynovitis then that itslef may be causing the CTS and utrasound imaging of the carpal tunnel would be interesting too.JB

Hello JB, I want to report what's been happening over the past 4 weeks with my CTs. Having fought against steroids a colleague suggested I look again into massages because they helped her a lot. I had tried them before but I think i just didnt do enough of them earlier on since they are very expensive. Searching around thenet I found and bought a automatic massaging product thing and it did give me wonderful results. Im still using it because a few twinges are left over but overall this remedy is wonderful and did everythig I hoped for. Plus i avoided the steroids which is a big deal to me. I know we cant discuss products here but do you know about this massager? I dont know why more CTs or RA patients never even mention it. What i forgot to say is that even though the product isnt for RA, alot of the pain i "thought" was RA is now gone. So i guess that pain was the CTs part of the problem, right? Anyway, thanks so much for the advice and for listening to me go on and on. Erica

I think the same point applies to massage as to steroids. They are both rather nonspecific treatments which can benefit a variety of things so it's still hard to know exactly what was causing most of the symptoms. The important thing however is that you have improved so to a large extent it does not matter what the main problem was, nor does it matter whether it was the massage that helped or if it simply improved by itself anyway - its often impossible to tell in the individual patient with these conditions. Now we hope the problem stays away. JB