Now It's My Elbow

Back in November 2005 I started having some pain in my right elbow and noticed that I was occassionally dropping things out of my right hand. I went to my Orthopedic Dr, who without even touching my elbow or taking an xray diagnosed it as tennis elbow and gave me a shot of cortisone in the elbow. In Feb 2006 the pain was back and it was worse, even waking me up several times in the night. I went back to the same Dr and he gave me another cortisone shot, this time I had a big reaction and it was terribly painful. He still said it was tennis elbow with possibly the swelling in the joint pressing on the nerve similar to carpal tunnel, but in the elbow.

The pain has returned and I purposely put it off until I couldn't deal with it anymore. I wake up several times at night with such a charley-horse type cramp in my elbow down to my fingers! I drop things from that hand every day and it aches all the time. I made an appt with a different Orthopedic Specialist who was recommended by my pcp and went to see him today. He agrees that I do have symptoms of tennis elbow but said it seems to be more then that and he is concerned. He is scheduling an MRI of my arm because he is thinking I may have a tumor in the elbow joint. One of the possible diagnosis for the tumor in my head is a shwannoma (a tumor of the schwann cells along a nerve). While they are generally benign they do continue to grow and can occur in more then one place in your body; knees, ankles, wrists, elbows, and head are the usual places. From what I've read some people with schwannoma's also have scoliosis (sp?) and I do have a mild case of that. A worse possible scenario is that there is a "nasty" tumor in my elbow and that is what caused the tumor in my head. Best case scenario is that it is a really bad case of tennis elbow with compression on the ulna nerve.

Once he sees the MRI of my arm we will decide what to do. I couldn't believe it when he said I needed the MRI because I could have a tumor in the elbow joint . The last time I went in for an MRI they found a tumor, it is a bit scary to think about that happening again.

Tommorrow is my appt with Dr Black at Dana-Farber, it should be interesting.