for your sake i really hope the antibiotics are a coincidence too!! i have a love/hate relationship with antibiotics. mostly hate. bacterial infections really scare me.
your mom is smart she had the kidney/cardio work up. i have had the basic kidney test which was normal. when my mag was so low i wanted to see a nephrologist and they were a b*tch about seeing me because my levels were normal so i didn't go! i need to see a cardio but i keep putting it off. there's a tilt table test tehy do for fainting, your mom might've had that done?
i did drink salt water for awhile. i swapped salt for my caffeine addiction >_< I am much smarter (higher hr and bp i guess!) with caffeine in my system. and i'm not as thirsty. it's good to drink water but at the rate i'm doing it, you're right, not good. your mom sounds like me. flushing all of her electrolytes out!
i've done a "salt" fast where i did't have much salt (impossible to completely avoid it) for 24/hrs. and then i tested my salt levels and a hormone called aldosterone.. "It acts mainly on the distal tubules and collecting ducts of the nephron, the functional unit of the kidney, to cause the conservation of sodium, secretion of potassium, " so anyways, flip side, low aldosterone is correlated to low salt and high potassium. i have that. not freakishly low or else i'd be in bad shape. i also worry that with the neck pain (and you're totally right, just the ANTICIPATION of getting a neck spasm, makes me anxious)... my bp sometimes actually gets high. or i should say my diastolic? bp. but it only happens sometimes.
sounds like your mom injured her brachial plexus too? That is bad, if she had muscle wasting in her hands. My hands are normal but my shoulders are emaciated. i have no rotator cuff muscles and my right shoulder wings a LOT more than my left, which would mean i hurt my long thoracic nerve. did she get dizziness after the accident? how long did it take for her to feel like her old self? i overstretched my neck in october of 2010 and hurt my shoulders in march 2010
the neck bracing does help. i wish i had known about it sooner!! that is reassuring your mom had such a severe injury and she is healthy!
the edema i expperience is very subtle and depends on what position im in. my pt has had several theories about it
--rsd/crps "Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), formerly Begum Syndrome, is a chronic progressive disease characterized by severe pain, swelling and changes in the skin. It often affects an arm or a leg and may spread to another part of the body and is associated with dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system resulting in multiple functional loss, impairment and disability." um yeah, so she is wrong about this. i've read forums about people with crps and they all live in snuggies because they can't stand harsh fabric touching them and sweat excessively, turn red, etc etc. it really doesn't describe me at all.
--my c7 transverse process (bone in the side of my neck) is too big. i had a cervical mri and they said it was normal. and then i got another person to look at the mri and they said it was normal but my pt insists the bone is big. so i watched these youtube vids on how to read a cervical mri. just the basics. and to me it looks kind of big too!! but what do i know. this is a bird's eye view of it, the transverse process is the part that looks like a leaf.
having a big bone or just winged shoulders and numbness and edema would mean i have thoracic outlet syndrome "Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (TOS) is pain, numbness, tingling, and/or weakness in the arm and hand due to pressure against the nerves or blood vessels that supply the arm. It is due to tight muscles (my pec minor!!), ligaments, bands, or bony abnormalities in the thoracic outlet area of the body (big c7?), which lies just behind the collar bone. Pressure on the nerves is the problem more than 90% of the time, but occasionally the artery or vein is involved."
^anyways, that's what i think i have. i was going to demand a brachial plexus mri but my pt said it would probably come back normal
