Not what we expected

The first surgery took place on February 12. The hand surgeon, opened up the arm expecting to find a tumor inside the posterior interoseous nerve. Instead, he found a section of the nerve that was 4 to 5 times thicker than normal, hardened, and discolored. The nerve above this section was normal. The area below, as far as he could see, was abnormal. He could not graft a long enough piece of nerve to make it work so he took a section of the nerve for testing & closed up my arm. After this surgery, I completely lost all use of the extensor muscles. I could grip and still use my hand to some extent but could not extend my fingers. The preliminary pathology report said it was not cancer. We waited about a week for the next report which also told us what it was not but, once again got no diagnosis. Then a section of the nerve was sent to a neuropathology lab at the University of Pittsburgh where a Pathologist diagnosed it as an intraneural perineromia in the posterior interosseous nerve. This pathologist said, in his 20 year career, this was only the second time he had seen this.