Stump the Doc, II

I had another appointment with the doctor Monday. She got the results of my spine X-ray, and everything there was perfectly normal. So, I have to go see a neurologist to see if s/he can figure it out. But my primary doctor says it isn't an orthopedic problem from what she can tell. I'm just hoping it isn't some weird psychosematic thing where there's no earthly reason for this to be happening except my brain isn't telling the muscle to work.

So strange. I looked up some cool anatomy illustration graphics of the arm, and with my admittedly small amount of medical knowledge, think that the problem is with the Long Bed Biceps Bronchii. It was interesting seeing how it's put together. From what I can tell, it seems to start at one point in the shoulder, then about halfway down the arm, it kind of splits in two, then wraps around the forarm side of the elbow. The two branches, if you will, are called the long bed (the outer side) and the short bed (closer to your body). My short bed seems to be Ok, in fact it seems to be trying to pick up the slack best it can, it has grown a bit. But the long bed is on vacation right now.

So stay tuned, I'll holla when I see the next contestant on Stump the Doc!

Dave

Ti-iii-iime ain't on my side

no it ain't,
for the Howiezine

So much for making a big splash with my first Howiezine! I had a cool idea for doing one where a guy is on a golf course looking for his ball, which is in the foreground in a very unusual spot (in a tree, impaled on a deer's antlers, something like that) and the text was "I lost me" then read on the ball, the logo for the Nike "Mojo" line of golf balls. No idea what I'd do for found with that concept, but I liked that one. Well, I frittered time away to the point where I couldn't finish that concept in time for the deadline. So I panicked a bit. So, I figured, why not use that emotion for the page? So that's what I went with because I didn't have anything else. The first page is supposed to be a classified ad or poster roughly cut from the paper or taped to a lightpole. The second is the panic button I found and pushed and if you look closely, punched, repeatedly to no effect. What worse, it didn't print out nearly as well as this image would have you believe. But, in a way that makes the concept work that much better!...uh...right?

All I can say is that Superheroes will be better. I promise!!!

Dave

Click on an image to enlarge:

Super-wuss

You know how in cartoons when a character who thinks he's stronger than he is, and when he flexes his bicep it sags into a U shape? That's how I feel right now, almost literally. My bicep has stopped working. Literally. I didn't injure it to my knowledge, it doesn't hurt at all, it just doesn't work. I can't hold my 32 lb. son in my right arm now for more than a few seconds, and even then it's a challenge. It's the strangest thing. It's just my bicep and the supporting muscles get tired very easily because they are doing so much more work than normal now, because the bicep itself is the workhorse so-to-speak.

But I went to the doctor to see what's up and she is stumped. She said it seems like I would either
a) be in pain or
b) more muscles wouldn't be functioning or
c) the bicep would at least be twitching involuntarily for the normal causes of this condition or
d) the reason for the problem would be obvious (say for instance, the muscle had detached from the bone or something)

She thinks it has something to do with my spine, but I could see the wheels in her head grinding a bit on the symptoms. She's a very smart doctor, and problems of this nature are her specialty, so to stump her like this unusual and a bit disconcerting. I have another appointment next week. She said she is going to consult with some other doctors on my problem since it doesn't fit the usual description. I also noted that there has been a numbness in half the pad part of my right thumb since we were in Vegas. Interestingly to me, she said that the nerves to the bicep and the ones to the thumb would be affected by different disks in the spine, so she didn't think they were related, at least that way...

I asked her if there was a chance this was muscular dystrophy or something similar, and she doesn't think so. She said if it were something like that, I would have a much more general exhaustion, not just a specific muscle. So, she didn't think it was a sign of Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy or Lou Gehrig's Disease. But, the thing that has me a bit scared is that she wants to put off for as long as she can doing something called an EMG. I don't remember what that stands for, but basically they take a needle and stick it into the muscle to try to stimulate it.
It wasn't comforting that she said it was like getting a root canal without novacaine. eeek!

So, that's the story for now. Stay tuned next week as we play round 2 of Stump the Doc!

Dave