“I feel stupid for putting this off for so long.  I suffered with this for almost 2 years and this has been easier than I could have imagined.” 

This is what Joe recently told me in the office when I saw him after his carpal tunnel surgery. 

Joe is a friend of mine.  I have known him for years and he came to see me not long ago for a problem he was having with his hand.  It was going numb and he had pain in it most of the day.    

But that’s not how it started.

  Like Joe said, it started off almost 2 years earlier as just an achy pain in his wrist.  He thought maybe he had sprained it somehow.  Maybe playing golf or doing yard work.  He laid off it for a little while and took some Advil for a few days.  It got a little better but it just kept coming back every few days.  It wasn’t swollen or bruised and he could still do everything he needed to do during the day so he didn’t think much of it.  It was just an annoying pain from time to time. 

A few weeks passed and then he started feeling a little tingling in the fingertips.  It wasn’t all the time but it happened over and over again.  Sometimes it was just the index finger, sometimes the thumb.  After a while he noticed that it seemed worse after a long day at the store.  Joe owns a retail store and he has to run the register during the day.  He also has to unload heavy boxes to restock his shelves certain days of the week.  On busy days he had more pain and more tingling at the end of the day.  He was taking Advil most days now to keep the pain under control. 

 Then he started noticing it when he woke up.  Not every morning, but some days he would wake up with his hand and fingers numb.  He would have to shake it out for a few minutes in the morning before he got all the feeling back in it.  He thought it might be circulation issues but he didn’t have problems anywhere else.  His fingers weren’t blue or pale.  When he started waking up in the middle of the night with a numb hand he thought there might really be something wrong. 

Someone told him it might be carpal tunnel, with his wrist pain and numb fingers.  He looked it up and thought they might be right.  A wrist splint is supposed to help with carpal tunnel so he started wearing a splint to sleep.  That helped at first and he could sleep through the night again.  But he still woke up with numb fingers most days.  And he couldn’t really wear the splint at work without people asking him about it.  He initially told people he had injured it, just to have something to say, but weeks turned into months and that story didn’t really work any more. 

The last straw was when he started dropping things.  He broke a few bottles at the store when they just slipped out of his hand.  He thought he had a firm grip on it but the next thing you know there was a loud crash and broken glass everywhere.  That’s when he called me. 

It didn’t take me long to confirm that Joe was dealing with carpal tunnel syndrome.  He had done all the right things so far - medicine to reduce the inflammation and pain, a splint at night to deal with the numbness, and trying to avoid the activities that made it worse.  But he put up with it for way too long.  Carpal tunnel is not an emergency so you can put up with it for as long as you want to.  But most of our research shows that if it hasn’t gotten better after a month or two of taking an anti-inflammatory and wearing a splint, then it probably isn’t going to go away.  I didn’t even have to convince Joe to schedule the surgery.  He was begging me to do anything to make it stop.  It had worn him down and he was desperate for relief. 

A few weeks later we had Joe scheduled for his surgery.  It took about 30 minutes.  He was on his couch at home that afternoon with his wife and daughters doting over him while he ‘recovered’.  I think he may have played it up a little for sympathy but I’m not one to judge.  When he came back to see me a week later to get his stitches out, he couldn’t thank me enough.  And that’s when he confessed that he felt like an idiot for waiting so long. 

Sadly, Joe’s case is not unique.  I see a lot of people that try and try to get carpal tunnel symptoms under control in order to avoid surgery.  I don’t blame them really.  I would avoid surgery if I could too.  But after you have done all the steps that might work, and you still have pain or numbness, then it’s time to get help, not simply continue suffering. 

That’s why I put together this Carpal Tunnel Relief min-course.  It walks you through each of the steps that are recommended for managing carpal tunnel.  It explains what carpal tunnel is, what causes it, how you can treat it yourself, and when you need to see someone for more help.  I even included a video of carpal tunnel surgery so you can see exactly what is involved in the surgery.  And I have a copy of the Before Surgery & After Surgery Instructions I give my patients so they know what it looks like to have surgery and what the recovery includes. 

If you are struggling with carpal tunnel symptoms or know someone who is, I want you to sign up for this course.  There is no cost.  Simply log in and watch the videos.  Stop suffering and get the help you need now.  I don’t want you to feel like an idiot like Joe.