Trouble

Since sometime in the Spring, I have had trouble with my wrist.  

Backup for a second.  Since 1996, I have had trouble with my wrist.  Back then, I had a softball accident that caused the wrist bone for my thumb to detach from the rest of the wrist.  I had surgery to tie it back together just before Christmas that year. 

In 2001, I was having trouble again, and ended up eventually having a partial fusion of my wrist done.  After that surgery, I ended up with maybe a total of 60 degrees of motion in my wrist.  (I can get 180 degrees of motion in the other.)  I have had periods when I tweaked it, or whatever, and 21 months ago, I went into the doctor because it had been acting up, he shot the thing with cortisone, and the wrist was immobilized for two months.  This sent me on my way again.  Here is what it looks like today:

OK, that's a bad picture.  The (not small) bandaid is covering the scar, which already looks crazy because it is from two surgeries. 

Since the Spring, I have been having pain the wrist.  It's been getting progressively worse since.  I have been wearing the brace off and on all summer long, hoping it would get better, but it hasn't.

About 8 weeks ago, I was doing some job interviews getting ready to hire someone.  One of the guys that came in for an interview just absolutely crushed my hand.  The grip of death.  I didn't have the brace on because I didn't want to waste the short time we had in those interviews talking about me.  It took a number of days to feel like he hadn't destroyed it.  Since that time, things have gotten really progressively worse.  Use a chainsaw for a while?  Can't use the hand for anything for a few days.  Screwdriver?  Forget about it.  That shed I started working is largely unchanged.

At this point, I can use a key to open the lock on a car or the doorknob of the house, but I can't turn the key in the deadbolt.  I can't use a mouse without the brace on.  I can not put any weight or pressure on the hand, without pain shooting out.  Not good.

Two weeks ago, I went to someone we know that works on hands, not my normal surgeon.  I figured a second set of eyes couldn't hurt.  His prognosis?  "Something is definitely wrong with this wrist."  He wanted me to take my x-ray back to the regular guy I see for my wrist, and have him take a look at things, since we had x-rays from 20 months ago.  He seemed to indicated that my surgeon was one of the best around.  Speaking of the x-ray, here is another view of my hand:

That's an iPad in the background, by the way.  I needed to use something as a back light for scanning the x-ray.  Worked pretty good.

Anyway, I got another cortisone shot in my wrist today.  I have surgery scheduled for next Friday, to have my hand fused, from the middle bone just above the existing hardware, all the way down to my forearm bone.  Everything under the existing fusion looks good, according to the doctor, he thinks the gap between the bottom of the wrist or the top of the forearm bone must have compressed, or something, and has been causing all this trouble.

He gave me the option of just trying another cortisone shot, and seeing what happens, or doing the surgery and getting it taken care of right away.  I've already done one shot early last year, so I bargained into a shot now, and schedule surgery, and then if the shot starts helping significantly by Monday, we would cancel the surgery and roll with it.  Soon we will see.  If the full fusion happens, I will have no flapping type motion at all left in my wrist.  I will be able to twist the wrist, but as far as usefulness, it will be much like having the wrist brace on all the time, like I am doing anyway.  Hopefully just without the pain in the end.

This also means there are a few other things at risk here.  I need to get the yard cleaned up and ready for Winter.  I have been ignoring it for two months.  I had planned to make Emma a Halloween costume.  It was going to be fantastically nerdy.  (Maybe I can still design, and get her to manufacture...)  I would also be in a cast almost until Christmas time. maybe that doesn't matter, since in a cast, I don't lose tons of motion over what I would already have after the surgery...

Back to being a lefty, I suppose.  It's not so bad, I've had some experience.  :)

Also, happy "Ten Eleven Twelve"