As of tomorrow, it will have been 4 weeks since my Carpal Tunnel Release surgery. I have 30% of my strength and grip back, and a fairly decent range of motion with my palm and I can move my fingers and bend them almost 100%. There is vast improvements everyday, they are little but when you suddenly can't use you dominant hand you notice.
When I got to the plastic surgeons office Ihave to admit I was fairly anxious, not ever having had any surgery before (unless you count all four impacted wisdom teeth taken out in one shot). I signed some waiver forms, then was brought into the pre-op room for the needle from hell. I'm sure there are worse ones, this just happened to be the most painful one I've ever had. They had to numb all my nerve endings for this, NO, you don;t get put under! I was left there for 20 min as the stuff kicked in, I kept poking at it, thinking I'm going to feel all this! And it was true!!!!
The strangest thing is that you can feel,hear,smell and watch (if you wanted to). The worst soundis when they are cranking the instrument to spread apart your skin (it still gives me the heebeegeebees). I only had the nerve to look over three times, and it probably totalled less than 10 seconds! Did I mention you could feel everything, yes FEEL...but it didnt hurt. UNTIL, 6-8 hours later when the anetheasia wore off. I thought that needle was the worst part, well I was totally mistaken.
I spent 15 minutes in the waiting room holding the bandages tightly, then I was allowed to go home. For 3 days I had to have my hand elavated over my shoulder and not get the dressings or wound wet. This was such a minor surgery, I don't know how other people can put up with anything more than 2" long! haha....I'm such a whimp!!! Five days after the surgery I was allowed to take off the bandages, and let the incision and stitches see sunlight. I was so freaked out, funny thing is that if it was on someone elses body I would have been okay to look at it.
Thirteen days after the surgery, I went to have the 17 stitches removed. Within an hour 2/3 of it split open, and a few days later so did the rest of it. As of today, most of the dead flappy skin has fallen off as well as 50% of the scabs. It is all healing very nicely. I took over 100 photos (mind you alot are blurry) of the healing process. Soon to be blogged, when I get the time to sort thru them.
I will wait until next year before I do the left hand, because i'm going stir crazy not being able to craft.
Labels: carpal tunnel
