Apologies for the delay to this post but I’ve been doing my best to avoid the computer for the last week or so.
My surgery went ahead as scheduled or rather rescheduled on the 12th and the initial prognosis is good, upon opening up the side of my thumb it has been established that there is no tendon damage and that whilst there was a lot of scaring around the median nerve it too was in tact so they were able to do something called neurolysis which essentially consisted of un-sheathing the nerve and cutting away the excess scar tissue, this process is unlikely to return the sense of feeling to the tip of my thumb but should theoretically at least do something to stop the nerve from sending phantom signals back up into my hand and arm saying it’s in pain.
Hold on I’m not sure that makes much sense so I’m going to try to explain a bit better the reasons I was pushing for this surgery in the first place, not having any feeling in the tip of my thumb has not been the end of my world, it’s made my typing a little clumsy and I’ve burned it while cooking a couple of times but what has been unbearable is that the median nerve that serves the thumb has known there was something wrong with it and sent random shooting pains back up through my thenar (the pulpy bit of your hand beneath your thumb) and into my forearm. These pains have been fairly random but were largely brought on by things like having to drive long distance especially in difficult conditions like heavy rain or stop start traffic where I might subconsciously be gripping the steering wheel harder than normal. My boys also have an uncanny ability to single out this weakness and bite, kick or grab out at it resulting in often days of being unable to sleep properly.
Right back to where we are now they’ve done the surgery, I’ve been through a week of being stoned out of my box on happy pills that barely dented the pain nor helped my sleep and I’ve been back to have my dressing changed and spoken with a specialist hand nurse who’s given me some simple exercises and things are definitely improving, I’ve run out of the hospital prescribed happy pills and am now just subsiding on over the counter analgesics, these do seem to be working though and whilst I’m still getting cramping through my thenar it’s believed by the specialists that this will improve with time and I may even regain some feeling in the tip.
My stitches come out on Friday and they’ll take a decision then as to whether or not I will benefit from physiotherapy, they will also decide then whether I will need to return to see my consultant surgeon in either two months or three as this is the soonest that things are likely to have settled down enough to judge if there has been any permanent improvement and whether or not further surgery might be necessary.
I’m allowed to drive again once the stitches are out which will be of huge relief to the wonderfully patient and kind Mrs Bunny Chow who has borne the brunt of childcare duties and been running around trying to do the school runs etc.
I’ll leave this there as I’ve pretty much exhausted my patience for one-handed typing.
thanks again for all the kind messages and support.
TTFN
Mr Bunny Chow
Related articles
- Ouch 6 (mrbunnychow.com)
- Ouch 5 the De-lousing begins (mrbunnychow.com)
The life and photography of Mr Bunny Chow 