Do not give in to it

One thing to remember with this is that you should never give in to it completely. If you feel weak, and it seems strength is never going to improve, just try again another day. Part of dealing with this is that the muscles may stop completely for a time, and ones you have left may fatigue easily. This can lead you to believe that you are destined for complete paralysis. And, if you give in to it, and stop trying, you may as well be paralyzed. I know of at least one case of what had been diagnosed as Brachial Plexus Neuritis where the individual had such pain that they stopped trying to move the impacted arm at all. Last I heard, he could not move it at all, and there was talk of amputation. I should say here that I have never met this person, and they may have other stuff going on in their life that is impacting this. And, the diagnosis I know of may not actually be correct. But, it does serve to illustrate my point, which is that you should keep trying to move, even when all logic tells you that it will not improve things.

I think that the only reason I can move the thumb and index finger of my right hand at all today, is that I never stopped moving them, or trying to move them, even though the expert doctors I had at the time told me that the only way I would regain movement would have been to have tendon transfer surgery. I know that if I had stopped moving my fingers, just outright stopped trying to use my right hand, that those doctors would have been correct. I would then have needed surgery of some kind.

When I had the more recent flare-up that lead to the winging of my right scapula, no one ever mentioned surgery as being anywhere in the future. But, they also did not tell me how profound the weakness in my arms would eventually become, or how long that would last.

My winging scapula happened in Oct of 2006. At that time, I could barely do a push-up standing against a perpendicular surface. By December, I could do 20 standard push-ups on the floor. At that point, I thought this would be a minimal impact to me. When I tried in mid January, I could only do 15. Two weeks later, I could only do 10. Next time I tried, I could not push myself off the floor at all. For the next year or so, I tried every day to do push-ups at a 45 degree angle off of a desk at work. I slowly worked up to where I could do 20 or so of those. Then suddenly, I started to feel very weak and fatigued after those attempts. My arms would just start to shake. Notice, both arms were shaking. At this point, there was no thought that this could be impacting my other arm. Gradually, my total numbers in each session dropped off just as they had initially, and finally I could not do one push-up even at 45 degrees on that desk, and my arms and/or hands were shaking at the least exertion.

Now going on 3 years into the second bout of this, I was ready to give it up. I was weak, and I felt like it would be like this forever. But a day or so ago, I tried again to do a real pushup from the floor. I could do one- for the first time in a couple of years. Today, I did 5. My lower back and shoulders are killing me. My right hand feels like it will fall off at my wrist for some reason. But, I could do some push-ups. Maybe other small returns are also possible.