Yesterday kicked off the official “week in the life” challenge over on Ali Edwards’ blog. I had every intention of playing along, but I’ve decided to reschedule my week to another time. The idea is to capture an ordinary week (or maybe it would be an extraordinary week), but my week is just too crazy to fit it in and I’ll be living part of it with one hand out of order. I will be undergoing hand surgery again!
Yes, I finally broke down and went back to the hand doctor and heard the news I knew was coming – I have to have more surgery on my hand. My doctor does more of trigger release surgeries than anyone else in Utah and he said in all his years of doing this, he has only had a handful (pun intended) of patients who have had the experience I’ve had. I’ve still got problems with my tendons and pulley system in my hand. There is a characteristic popping and clicking when he tries to bend my finger past a certain point. I can’t bend my finger past that point without significant pain. I have swelling all the time and it has never gone away. He also could draw a line on my hand showing me exactly where my pain travels to. This is because even though he cleaned out and removed as much of the tendon sheath that he could, the tendons have become too large for the pulley system. He will have to remove part of one of the tendons to allow for working room with the others. This should alleviate the problem. He will also have to clean out the sheath and the inflammation again and probably remove some scar tissue build up. There will be 2 incisions this time. He should be able to go back in through the original one in my hand, but will also have to make an incision in my finger.
My scar from last time is barely visible
The recovery should be similar to last time, even though the surgery is more invasive. He also said that there is nothing I could have done to prevent this. He said it is not because I use the computer a lot, and even if I had done extra physical therapy that wouldn’t have fixed it either. It is a structural problem that just happens sometimes. The fact that it wasn’t fixed by the 1st surgery is just a rare thing. (why do I have to be rare?)
It’s my index finger on my left hand. You might be able to see some of the swelling here, it has even gone into my middle finger, thumb, and hand.
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Especially if you compare it to my normal right hand
But this is where it really shows
That is one fat finger! And the top part of my palm is very swollen as well. And that is as far as I can bend my index finger. Literally, that is as far as it will go. It is stuck. It’s been that way since last September (worse at times) and it is very painful. Constant pain. Obviously, I have worked right through the pain most of the time, but it has not always been easy. I’m hoping that this surgery will give me some relief. If the surgery is like last time, I will have a lot more pain and swelling (and total numbness) for several days after the surgery. Then it should continue to improve. The doctor is telling me that he expects a full recovery this time around.
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So this just isn’t the best week for me to try and document the everyday details of life. But I will be watching those who are participating in Ali’s challenge and filing away inspiration to use for my own scrapbooking projects. I’ve been working ahead on several scheduled blog posts so even though my hand will be out of commission for a few weeks, my blog wont! I will still be around a little bit on twitter and facebook when I can since I can use one hand and my iphone for those, but I will be taking quite a bit of time off to recover. Gotta take care of myself and get this thing resolved.
