Angelika´s disease process

On November 4th, 2002 I received the following email (this has been approved by the author for publication on this page):

Hello Orkana,

In November 2000, after I had been carrying heavy loads, I began to experience severe pain. I am a saleswoman and I was sitting at the cash register when my right hand swelled after 2 weeks and the pain became unbearable.

I then went to my family doctor, who diagnosed tendinitis and referred me to a surgeon. This put my arm in a cast. Since there was no improvement, the surgeon now diagnosed that it was cabal tunnel syndrome that he wanted to operate. I couldn't believe it and went to an orthopedic surgeon.

The orthopedic surgeon diagnosed that my hand was stiff and that I therefore had to do hand gymnastics. He showed me a few exercises and said it could take up to a year for the pain to stop. Since the pain got worse after the exercises, I went to see the doctor again. Because I doubted his diagnosis, he became very confused.

I asked him if he could prescribe a splint for me so that I could work, as I was unable to do so because of the pain. Well, he said, we can invest that. Besides, I should do everything with my left hand.

3 months later I changed doctors again and went to another orthopedic surgeon. It could be inflammatory rheumatism, he diagnosed and prescribed me both pills and electrotherapy. Since I noticed that this treatment did not help either, I began to despair. So I dragged myself through my work until one day my arm swelled so much that I was scared.

This time I went to a Chrurgen. He looked at each other's hand and arm and said it must be something else if the complaints lasted so long. So he sent me to the CT. The lunate malacia turned out to be in the 2nd stage, which would not have been visible on a normal X-ray, since lunate malacia is only detectable by X-rays from the 3rd stage.

The surgeon then sent me to the specialists at the BGU in Duisburg, where the conservative method first followed, because the irritation and swelling in the hand and arm first had to subside.

In November I will have an operation: radius shortening.

I am happy that I finally know what kind of illness it is. I got the information from the Internet, where I was able to get an idea of what the disease means for the first time.

That is the current status, to be continued.

Best regards,

Angelica