Should I be concerned about ongoing pain in my left forearm?
Basic stats:
I'm a 49 year old male Canadian, ~280Lbs (127 kg), 5'11" (180cm), non-smoker, drink ~4 beers a week, no recreational drugs.
For prescriptions I'm on oral hydrocortisone (15mg daily) and levothyroxine sodium (0.1 mg daily) due to long term thyroid issues resulting from cancer treatments in my teens.
My issue is with my left forearm. I've been dealing with a growing pain focused around the elbow. This started.... roughly six months ago. It started off just feeling like tired muscles in my forearm. You know that almost bruised feeling you get after over working a muscle? That, but without doing any work.
It slowly got worse, and at this point while I still have that "tired muscle" feeling in the forearm, I also have significant inflammation in the elbow, which feels somewhat similar to the pain I get from arthritis in other joints.
In roughly the same time span, I seem to have pinched a nerve somewhere, and have had partial numbness in the same arm over the same period. Specifically in my baby finger and the outside half of my ring finger, as well as that same side of my hand and - less noticeably so - that side of my wrist. It's just a mild tingling and partial numbness. I still have sensory input there, but it's lessened. I don't know if that's related to the arm pain, but assume so. It has not worsened over that same time period though.
I feel I should mention that I do live a rather idle lifestyle at the moment. Most of my time is spent in front of a computer, often with that arm resting on a pull-out shelf from my desk.
Not sure how worried I should be about all of this. At the moment I don't have a family doctor and am on a waiting list. I'm also in a rural area with no nearby clinics that accept walk-ins, so my only viable option at the moment is either to go to the nearby hospital's emergency room or take a train to the nearest city to reach a walk-in clinic.
Posted Apr 5, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC