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