Less than 10 days after my injury, upon admission to inpatient rehab in a new hospital, I was on my way to get X-rays when the technician started chatting with me. Although I was running a consistent 101 degree fever and still very heavily medicated, I was able to describe him the basics of my injury. “Do you have any burning yet?” he asked me, to which I told him no with a befuddled look. He followed up and said, “I’ve had nerve damage dude, it will heal over time but wait ’til you get the burning. That’s a trip.” A few weeks later, in mid-August, I realized what he meant and started to feel the burning in my forearms.
The vertebra I had broken in my accident were in charge of the nerves that run down the forearms and through the fingertips. As a result, the first signs of those nerves healing was an intense burning sensation through my arms and fingers. It’s difficult to describe exactly, but I would say it feels like a string that’s on fire running through the length of my forearm which then branches off into my fingers. The intense burning feels like it’s just below the surface of my skin, almost like an itch, so I naturally scratch that area thinking that it will help it somehow, but it never really does much. It occurs randomly, lasts for a few minutes but sometimes much longer and since there’s little I can do about it, I have no choice but to accept it. It definitely hurts but more than anything, it’s a very strange sensation, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
Doctors told me this is normal and an indication that those nerves are healing and regenerating. I’ve had the burning in my arms and fingers for the last four months or so, but it occurs less frequently than it used to. Now I’ve started to feel a similar burning sensation (but not as itchy) in my abs and low back, which makes sense if you think my spinal cord is healing from the top down and now reaching those levels in my mid-body where I have about 60-70% sensation. While it’s an odd feeling, I do somewhat appreciate the burning since it’s an indication of healing. Now I try to embrace this burning and imagine that the fires burning in each millimeter of my body are happy fires that are bringing my body back to normal.
Arash Recovery 