Six Weeks Post-Op

It's now been six weeks since my surgery. Today I met with Dr. Millard for hopefully the last time and I'm now wrist brace free for the first time in about 4 months. It actually feels weird! I'm wearing an ace bandage around my hand/wrist for some support and because my hand incision is still really tender. Pressing on the incision is painful so typing on a computer actually hurts because my hand rests right on the incision. The ace bandage gives me some padding.

My hand is slowly getting better. I can curl my fingers into a fist, I just can't tighten them. I have no grip strength yet. I can't break the seal on a bottle so I have to ask others to do it for me. But I have all the dexterity back. I can type and do just about anything, I just don't have any strength. It will take time for me to regain the muscle that I lost after surgery. I'm sure Jeff will have lots of ideas on how to get that back.

There's still some swelling in the heel of my palm and apparently the scar tissue has built up pretty good. Dr. Millard told me to do deep tissue massage over the incision and when he pressed on it, it was quite painful. Pretty quickly he realized that I wasn't likely to press hard enough on my own hand because I'm really not into self-inflicted pain so he said I'd have to make Jeff do it. He said it was too bad Jeff wasn't there so he could tell him how hard to push and I just laughed and told him not to worry because Jeff had no problem causing me pain.

I did discuss the fact that I still have pain in my pinkie and ring fingers and asked how long I should give the pain to go away before I get concerned about it. He said if it's still painful in 2 months, then come back. Hopefully I don't have to see him again. I'm not sure what options would still be left to me after having surgery and I'd rather not have to find out.

My elbow is doing okay. I still can't straighten my arm all the way, but it's pretty close. The area around the incision is numb in some places and extremely tender in others. The back of my arm above my elbow is very sensitive to touch. Just having my hand or clothing rub across it can be uncomfortable. I also occasionally get a feeling like needles stabbing into my elbow which is always loads of fun! I expect all of this to get better over the next few months as the nerves continue to heal. My main concern is the pain in my fingers not going away and getting my functionality in my hand back.