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WHAT THE HECK IS NEUROGENIC THORACIC OUTLET SYNDROME?
Neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome—mercifully shortened to nTOS—is the reason I am stepping away from hands-on care for eight weeks. It is also the latest reminder that professional knowledge does not make anyone exempt from being a human with a body. Annoying, but true. The short version: my arm is not lazy, dramatic, or insufficiently motivated. The network of nerves traveling from my neck into my shoulder, arm, and hand is being irritated in a very crowded anatomical hall
WHISPERS: PART THREE: When the Body Goes Quiet
Shutdown fatigue, grief, sleeplessness, and the nervous system’s slow work of repair The storm beneath stillness: wake chemistry blazing above, shutdown below, and repair continuing at the roots. There is tired—and then there is the kind of tired that feels like the lights inside you have dimmed one room at a time. Tonight, my children were outside jumping like wild little monkeys. I was chasing legal paperwork, a dead laminator, a print deadline, and all the ordinary details
Whispers: Part Two: When Surviving Becomes Your Personality
I have always thought of pain as something loud. Pain was supposed to stop me. It was supposed to be sharp enough, dramatic enough or debilitating enough that I would have no choice but to listen. A broken bone screams. A fresh injury announces itself. But nerve pain is different. Sometimes it burns. Sometimes it shocks. Sometimes it tingles. Sometimes it becomes heavy, weak, clumsy, cold or strangely distant. And sometimes it becomes quiet. That is the dangerous part for a p
