Electrode test

 Friday we had Chris's electrode test. His injury to his arm is considered a Brachial Plexus injury because that is where the big bundle of nerves is at. The BB went into his neck at the top of the nerves where they start and then traveled down and landed in the brachial plexus bundle. 

Heres kind of a rough picture where you can see where they start in the neck and what they affect.

 They cant do an MRI on him because of the BBs so they wanted to do a nerve electrode test to see what the extent of the damage was. We had never had it done before but heard it hurt like hell. He was nervous about what they were actually going to do to him. We of course had to travel down to IMC again. We sat in the waiting room forever and they finally called us back. We had a wager on whether it was going to be needles or electrode patches. They had the machine in the room and Chris started looking at it to see what was on there and the nurse said "Oh youre checking out the torture device huh" I think he wanted to leave then!

The dr came in and talked over with us about what they were going to do and what they were looking for etc. He made a few pen marks on Chris and said it was time to get started. He tapped a big metal circle that was hooked to the machine to his hand and then got out this two pronged paddle thing. He hooked little stuff up to his hand and said ok this might tingle some. Think of it like sticking your tongue on a 9 volt battery. That was an understatement. He hit Chris with the first shock and he about came out of his chair. He said he would rather be hit with a 277 line than be shocked like that. They shock RIGHT on the NERVE where it sticks out the most. He had to shock a few more spots on his hand and you could tell it was really hurting him. He said it was awful. Chris has a very very high pain tolerance and never complains about things hurting so if he says something is bad you know its really bad.

They did a few different shocks in his hand and then it was time for the needles. They take a 30 gauge needle and hook it into the wiring. Then they poke the needle INTO the nerve and send the electric current into the needle. They also bounce the needle up and down into the nerve and then the take the needle and wiggle it around in the nerve. Just in case you missed that part that said IN THE NERVE. They did probably 6 different points in his hand and one in the forearm. He was completely white/green at this point. He was sweating profusely and was starting to pass out so they had to stop for a minute. He was starting to do that funny speech eyes rolling back in your head thing. He had a death grip on the chair with his free hand so he didnt hit the doctor. He had him take off his shirt at this point and lay on his back so they could do a few more in the upper arm. They did one in the center of the bicep, another 3-4 in the side of the shoulder, one in the ribs, a few in the front of the shoulder collar bone area, about 4 in his deltoid area and another 4 in his neck.

On the first picture in the post you can see some of the nerves in the arm/hand and they hit those plus a few more.

Poor guy was so pale by the time they stopped. I felt so bad for him. 

The doctor said that they were looking for denervation. Denervation is when the nerves die basically. They lose their supply from the injury and die and then regrow. About 4 weeks from a severe nerve injury they should be at the peak of denervation. We were 4 weeks out from his accident. So the doctor expected to see a whole bunch of that which is totally normal. Chris had almost none. He said the screen should be full of it and he was only getting just a few. So Chris's nerve damage isnt permanent and its not near as severe as they were thinking it was. More than anything they are still just recovering from shock and learning how to rework. He said he expects he should be in full strength recovery around 3-4 months. If for some reason Chris' progress goes stagnant they will have to do another test to see if the nerves have just stopped working or what their deal is. 

This is the nerves int the brachial plexus and the highlighted grey ones are his nerves that were injured. They figured his dorsal scapular nerve was injured but somehow it wasnt. The BB basically hit the c5 and c6 nerves when it went into his neck and radiated the trauma down. 

We were really excited to hear that the damage wouldnt be permanent and that he was healing a lot faster than they anticipated.