Why is my finger tenosynovitis spreading & I now have another possible tendon issue?

by Louise
(Canada)

Why is my finger tenosynovitis spreading and I now have other possible tendon issue?

I was diagnosed with tenosynovitis in my right finger and it has spread to other fingers. I now have what appears to be a tendon problem beginning in my right forearm.

What is going on and how can I stop and/or reverse this?

Here are the details...

1. Start from the beginning and give me a description of HOW and WHEN this all started.

My right ring finger started to pull down in a position that is called "trigger finger". I can no longer extend it or bend it all the way in. I also developed a hard small inflamed pea sized lump on my palm about 1 1/2 inches below that finger. The middle joint became swollen and stayed that way with inflammation apparent on either side of the joint. Later, the last joint became swollen and is now inflamed on either side of the joint.

When I went to the doctor he said it was tenosynovitis. The finger is achy and the inflamed areas are very tender. I told him about the hard lump and he said it was a scar. I never had it before this. I also told him that my middle finger on my left hand felt like it was about to start the same thing, due to similar pain from it.

He ignored it. He put me on anti inflammatory cream to rub into the finger. The cream made my finger feel a bit numb after for a while, but it didn't help.

I went back after a few weeks and told him and showed him how the finger was more bent and swollen and I was sure the left finger would soon follow suit.

He ignored the other finger and put me on anti inflammatories, asked me if I had hit it...no, and ordered an xray.

The xray came up negative. Now my left middle finger is bending over like I thought it would. My right pinky finger is starting now. The joints on those fingers are now inflamed and swollen. I sometimes get tingling in my right palm. Besides the palm pain I already had, I now have palm pain below the pinky finger that is about to turn down. Because of how I hold my ipad everyday, sometimes for hours, I think it may have something to do with it. The affected fingers are the ones pressed against it.

I stopped doing that weeks ago. Today something else started. When I extend my right arm, the inside of my right forearm, makes this sharp snapping feeling that goes from the inside of my elbow down to just above my wrist.

I see my doctor again in 2 weeks. I don't feel like he is being very proactive since I started seeing him about this end of October last year and nothing has really been done so to speak.

2. How long has this been going on.

My first symptoms began around September/16


3. Does the pain come and go, or is it
constant?

It is pretty constant. My hands feel achier and stiffer in the mornings.


4. Is it joint pain like arthritis, or tendonitis pain, painful tight muscles, etc?

I have joint pain and pain where the affected finger tendons are.


5. Overall health?

I have fibromyalgia, for 30 years now.


6. Age.

55


7. Activity level. Exercise? Hobbies? Work activities (sitting, standing, lifting, etc?)

Somewhat sedentary now due to the fibromyalgia.

Before that I was a competitive bodybuilder. I wasn't one that was afraid of exercise before fibro. I eventually had to quit work as an RN Supervisor after 25 years.

8. General description of diet.

I try to eat well. I have to admit I like my ice cream sometimes. I also drink Ensure plus calories to keep weight on.

9. History of car crash, major or minor injury, etc.

I had a bad trapezius injury when body building. Soon after that I started getting fibro symptoms. I quit when I became so fatigued all the time that I was falling asleep on the equipment.

I had a back injury during gymnastics as a teenager. I just remember the doctor saying that I would always have a bad back and I do have sciatica that comes and goes.

I had surgery for rectal cancer in 2007. Rectum and some colon removed and colon resected. No further signs of cancer.

I was run over by a large toboggan of kids when I was 12 which broke my nose pretty well. Needed seven surgeries over the years to reconstruct it. Tonsils and adenoids out when I was 34.

A fibro specialist had an MRI done of my neck and found that my cervical spine is out of alignment and is pressing against my spinal cord. He believes it happened either when I had the gymnastics injury, the toboggan injury or the body building injury.

I forgot to tell him about the jaw injury that I needed stitches for and had a concussion from while playing "red rover" as a child.

10. Ever taken Levaquin, Cipro, or any other antibiotic in the fluoroquinolne family?

I have been on Cipro several times for urinary tract infections.



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Joshua Answers:

Hi Louise.

Thanks for all the details.

The summary of my answer is: You are short of necessary nutrition, and the body can't work correctly without that necessary nutrition, and you are and have been on a downwards spiral for a long time, and that's why it's getting worse.

The Pain Causing Dynamic describes that downward spiral.

That's the mechanism of all Tendonitis and Tenosynovitis.

Nutritional insufficiency is a primary aspect of that mechanism.

What causes nutritional insufficiency?

Anthletics/weight lifting, trauma (like getting run over by a toboggan, surgeries, etc) and fluoroquinolone antibiotics, etc.

Fibromyalgia is primarily a result of nutritional insufficiency.

Basically, from a young age, you were running on an empty oil tank, and were trying to run your engine at 100 miles per hour with not enough and diminishing amounts of oil.

The engine seizes up, eventually.

Your doctor(s), unfortunately, have no idea what to do about this. They don't even know to look for it (and if they do, they usually look with incorrect testing). It's just not in their education/skill set. That's why doctors think that fibromyalgia is incurable (anything they don't know how to fix is proclaimed 'there's no cure!').

The last tool in their toolbox is surgery....which ignores all the causes of the 'need' for surgery in the first place.

And, I'd be very wary of taking more Fluoroquinolones like Cipro or Levaquin.

See: Levaquin Tendonitis

See: Levaquin Side Effects










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Joshua Tucker, B.A., C.M.T.
The Tendonitis Expert
www.TendonitisExpert.com