The Unkindest Cut, Part 2

The kidney stone episodes I alluded to in Part I were plenty painful, but I can tell you that the day they took off my splint and fitted me for a cast was for me a Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day  The nurse jostled my arm a little taking off the splint, and it was as if she'd clubbed me with a baseball bat.  In fact I almost threw up and I had to lie down for a few minutes to recover.  Then they X-rayed it, forcing me to twist this way & that and I suddenly discovered: my arm didn't do that any more.  By the time I got the cast on, I was grateful for the respite.

When I finally got the cast off, I had 'only' a long brace, and I got to start PT.  Here's where I started: if a 'handshake' position is 0 degrees, and palm-up is 90, I was at -5.  I could only bend it backward & forward about 15-20 degrees.  For 3 weeks I was stretched hot-packed, ultrasounded, and electrically stimulated; I did all manner of exercises both in PT and at home.  Then I went back to the doctor.

He was Not Happy, and he muttered darkly about "never getting it back" if I couldn't step up my game. He wanted me to hurt myself.  I protested that I had always heard pain was a signal to back off, but he said it was time to push through the pain.  When I asked him how far to push, he replied, "I want you to push until you want to punch me."

Cue the Rocky training montage (hold the raw eggs).  I worked as hard as I could, and I did push myself, although I'm sure I didn't do "enough" home exercise.  There's only so many times a day that you can block off a 20-30 minute chunk of time; since I had to work the weaker hand with the stronger one, both were occupied and it sure is hard to get much else accomplished. You can't keep up with a blog, I proved that.

Finally at the end of March I was released from PT -- but he warned me that if I didn't keep working, I'd start going backwards.

On the one-year anniversary of the surgery, I see that it's probably never going to be "normal" again.  I still walk around a lot of the time, holding my wrist with the other hand, rubbing it, stretching it... hoping to make it feel less tight, less stiff, less sore, stronger.  If I bend it hard, just the right way, it makes exactly the same sound a bowling ball makes when it comes out of the chute and smacks into the other balls on the rack.

So you can see what good it did me to be positive for once.