Published: 2009-11-01 17:18:38
Author: Corey Voegele | Wenatchee World | October 17, 2009
QUINCY — The spirit that drove Tim Weber to compete for the Quincy track team with his left arm lashed to his chest last spring now has him recovering from the rare virus that killed the nerves in his left shoulder.
He still can’t raise his arm, but he’s had the strength to hold onto his dreams through the yearlong ordeal and his recovery from surgery ...
Pain and, eventually, a diagnosis
Tim Weber first felt the pain in his shoulder on Oct. 18 of last year. That was a Saturday, and by the following Thursday, the shoulder had gotten much worse.
“I was at school, and I noticed in the afternoon that my arm was acting sluggish,” he said. “It wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do. I was trying to grab stuff off my desk and I couldn’t do it.”
Initially Tim and his parents thought the symptoms might have had something to do with his rotator cuff, an area he’d had problems with in the past.
“That day we were already planning to go to Wenatchee to go to my chiropractor,” Tim said. “We met with him and he told us it wasn’t anything he thought he could fix.”
The following day Tim met with Dr. Keary Kunz of Wenatchee Orthopedics. Tim credits Kunz with pointing him down the right road to an eventual diagnosis.
“He thought it was something neurological, something to do with my nerves and brain, that something wasn’t happening there,” Tim said.
“That was very wise of him to be able to pick up on that, given how rare it was.”
Eventually the diagnosis came in: Parsonage-Turner syndrome, which afflicts fewer than two in 100,000 people per year in the U.S.
Looking for options
Kunz perscibed Vicodin so Tim could sleep, and referred him to a neurologist at Wenatchee Valley Medical Center. But that doctor wouldn’t be able to see Tim for more than a month.
“My mom didn’t want to wait four weeks, so she called a pediatric neurologist, Dr. Stephen Glass,” Tim said.
Two days later, Tim went to see Glass at his office in Woodinville.
“I spent two hours that day getting MRIs and four or five hours the next day getting MRIs,” Tim said. They saw some cysts, but Dr. Glass said that didn’t explain what was happening.”