Question
Plz help!  3 weeks ago I woke with a pain on left side of spine between shoulder blades T3 area.  Week ago, numbness started on left hand.  Middle, ring and pinky.  3 days my elbow to wrist is numb.  Today Weakness in hand.  Could barely button my pants.  I have been working in Moscow and have limited access to care.  Few speak english.  Is this serious and what could it be?  Any treatments?

Answer
David,

At best it's simply a temporary "neuropraxia," such as what happens when you sit cross-legged too long and your foot falls asleep.  If this is the case, some massage, exercise, and time should help.  But it sounds more like you have a compressed nerve in your neck.  This can come from a protruding disc as well as from compromise due to bone spurs or other hypertrophic changes of osteoarthritic bones.   You should get someone to test your individual arm/hand/finger strengths, check your reflexes, listen to your lungs (especially at the top-apical lobes), check for soft tissue masses in the front of your neck above the clavicle, and also check nerve points along the elbow/arm/wrist (such as tapping the nerves with a hammer at the carpal tunnel, cubital tunnel, etc).   Any orthopedic doctor can do this.  If nothing bad is going on, e.g. no apical lung tumor, then your best home treatment is cervical tractioning.  This would involve a head harness and a cord to attach the harness to a door or wall, an athletic mouthpiece to protect your jaw, and instructions to only do it for a few minutes at a time (or else you could make things worse for yourself).   There is a chiropractor that has trained some doctors in Moscow and likely knows best who to contact.   Please email him:  Stephen Press, DC; at  [email protected]  

Good luck with this!   I hope I was helpful.

Dr. G