Please excuse this off topic post but I wanted to post this info so others might gain by my experience. The past 3 months I have experienced increasing levels of numbness and tingling in the fingers of both hands. Some days it was worse than others but it never subsided. Soon it was effecting my forearms as well so it was time to see the doctor.

After my visit with a neurologist and a completed nerve conduction test it was determined I had a very mild case
of carpal tunnel in both hands but they wanted an MRI
of my cervical spine to make sure that was not the problem.
Long story short – the MRI revealed a very severe stenosis(a narrowing of the spinal channel) from C3-C6 – multiple layers of my cervical spine are severely messed up caused by protrusions and degeneration. Carpal tunnel is not the problem.

What I have discovered is, this is something that happens to many people as they age and the onset is so mild that it can and does go on undetected for years. The symptons often are no more troublesome at first than what a person would go to a massage therapist for – you know stiff neck – sore shoulders etc.. By the way, the doctors said that was the very worst thing you can do for this condition – who knew?

So, the moral of this story is simple – if you have ANY tingling or numbness of hands or fingers or chronic sore neck and shoulders - go get a cervical spine MRI. My problem now is I have waited way to long for this to be a simple fix and if I had caught it earlier the prognosis would be a lot better as well as the surgical procedure would have been very simple comparatively. Worse yet is the fact that because I waited so long to see the doctor the surgery may not completely reverse my symptoms because there very well might be nerve damage that can’t be reversed!

Deane