more hand stuff

[serene]

Saw the hand specialist last night. Very nice man, cut me a break on his
fee.

There are apparently two thumb nerves to be concerned
about: the one that runs down the inside of the thumb, and the one on the
outside side. The inside one, which is the one that is really involved in
doing the pinching motions that opposable thumbs are so good for, appears
to be intact. The other one is damaged, but he's not sure if it's going
to require surgery, or if it will calm down as the swelling goes down in
my hand.

He'll see me in a week, take the stitches out, and assess where we are.
If I have to have surgery, it will wipe us out financially for a long
time, so I'm hoping that's not necessary.

Meanwhile, he said go ahead and get it wet, take the bandages off, and
don't baby it -- I'm to try to use it as much as possible. I'm typing with
two hands right now, but it's causing me a fair bit of pain, so I'll go
buy some tylenol on my break, and I'll give my hand frequent rest breaks.

It really looks monster-movie-ish. :-) If anyone wants to see, I can take
a picture when I get home.

Comments

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I ran out of the tylenol with codeine, which was working, but I'll go with something else.

[twostepsfwd.livejournal.com]

In my experience, Tylenol w/Codeine only works because of the codeine. Ibuprofen is a much better pain killer and also is an anti-inflammatory. This varies person-to-person obviously, but what brings down my inflammation and reduces pain the most for me is using ibuprofen plus an opioid pain med (tramadol, Tylenol w/codeine)

Hope that thumb nerve calms down so you can avoid surgery...