My own teenage daughter had a rib resection on right side-due to
having a cervical rib and horrible arm pain. Two years later she is
giving me a pep talk b/c I need to have the same surgery-as I have
the c-ribs too and have battled chronic neck pain i thought was due
to an accident but now learn its from the darn ribs in my neck:(
anyway-so glad to hear of your daughters positive outcome-
all the best to you,
~Robin

--- In thoracicoutletsyndrome@yahoogroups.com, "Dahl House"
<gpages@...> wrote:
>
> My daughter had bilateral rib resection (removal) about a month ago
by a fantastic vascular surgeon in Tulsa. She is doing great; now in
Physical Therapy. Her left sided TOS was (we believe) from a scar
tissue concern, and the right sided TOS was (we think) from a tangled
nerve/arteries.
>
> Either way, simply removing the first rib on both sides has done
WONDERS and she is mostly recovered. The left side had been a
problem for over a year and was very serious. The right side was
probably 9-10 months along before surgery and had a "complication"
just a few weeks before surgery, so it is recovering much slower.
>
> Her surgery was supposed to be 60-90 minutes long, but it took
almost five hours. She is very light weight (thin) and apparently
did not want to give up those ribs! So the doctor had a quite a time
getting them removed. Entry was under the arm pits and she has scars
there that are now hardly even noticeable.
>
> We visited her Pain Management doctor last week and he gave her
samples and prescription for Voltaren (Diclofenac) gel. Apparently
the gel is fairly new. He prescribed 5 large tubes ($32 a tube if
insurance didn't cover it) for her and we are waiting for Prior
Authorization on them. She is not taking any other meds at this time
and that is a real blessing!
>
> Bless her heart, she has really had a rough year! We are thankful
that she is having success and now we can concentrate on the more
recent right side incident. It is regrowing nerves and right after
surgery it was very obvious - she had bruising as the new nerves had
increased circulation and it was not painful, just looked worse than
it was.
>
> She still has problems with specific motions with the right hand.
During PT, using heat to loosen up the shoulder joints and arms is
proving highly beneficial. Without heat, her improvement is much
more limited. She has just two more PT visits in this round, and we
will probably wait 2-3 weeks with the new exercises and then request
another round of PT.
>
> One of the things the PT assistants have her do is "walk" up the
wall (or door) with her finger tips and see how high she can get.
Then they put a piece of tape where she gets the highest.
>
> They also do the "genie" stretch, which is a new thing. It is
taken from the "I Dream of Genie" show, because the exercise starts
with arms crossed like Genie would do, and then stretches fromo one
side to the other, slightly pulling on the elbow. This really helped
her range of motion come back quickly.
>
> This week they added stretches with the yellow plastic tie things
and some of those are difficult because they are "balanced"
resistance when she uses both arms.
>
> She has to concentrate on rotating her shoulders backwards and
holding in the scapulas so they don't "wing out" during exercises.
>
> She is also doing a few stretches with light hand-held weights to
work out the stretching in many directions.
>
> Is there a place on the internet that shows PT stretches and
techniques? I haven't found any. Maybe we need to organize some and
take photos to show what my daughter is doing. These are very simple
and almost anybody can do them at home. They are really making a
difference in her recovery!
>
> Debbie Dahl
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>