One of life’s nastier little ironies was brought home to me yesterday. My thrill of learning double swords has been considerably dampened by the discovery of a considerable loss of strength in my left hand. It doesn’t affect my typing much but I have an ulnar nerve neuropathy, mapped by a sometimes painful session with a neurologist.It seems to be all my own fault.
As I realised last night and this morning, I have a habit of nodding off on the couch with my head supported on my heavily bent left arm and I woke this morning with my arm bent in a fully-closed position and head on my hand. He also said one of the worst things I could do as exercise if I have a mild problem with the nerve in the elbox is bicep curls with heavy weights. Guess what features significantly in my weights routine I started last year. 
The measurement session was interesting – he experimented manually with testing grasp and resistance strength in many axes and ways. Nerves obviously aren’t binary – I have to think of them as some kind of creaky analog control because obviously some signal gets through but there’s literally no strength in my grasp.
Tags: health
After a scary (lump in the arm) ultrasound result and MRI to investigate further, I have a nice medical bill and the information that despite the presence of an “atavistic muscle” – an anconeus epitrochlearis which is
present in 11% of people, according to this excerpt:
http://tinyurl.com/d8orcv
and treatment is partial or total excision of the muscle according to
this one
http://tinyurl.com/ccc9as
the neurologist said he recommends against surgery, just 4 months of bend the arm as little as possible