Gory Details

I wasn't going to blog about it this time. Fans of my previous blog read all about it the first time, and I thought I was just going to be bored with the subject.

Then I got the hardware.

The backstory is about this weird syndrome I developed in my right wrist (and now it's in my left wrist, but we're not talking about that right now). It's called ulnar impaction, and it has to do with the long ulna bone in the forearm bumping into the little lunate bone in the wrist and mashing it to a pulp. Well, not exactly a pulp, but a bruised and degenerative mess. Likely caused, or at least exacerbated, by years of pounding away at a keyboard. So several years ago, I underwent an extremely invasive and fairly awful surgery on my right hand.

Sigh. You can read all about it here (scroll down to March 16, 2007 for the beginning of the saga).

Recovery from surgery, end of story, right? Nope.

That giant piece of hardware that they put in me--you can see the x-rays of it in my former blog--was too big for my arm. Most people live with the plate inside them for the rest of their lives. (And no, it never actually set off the metal detector at the airport, it's made of titanium.) But again, I seem to be some freak of nature and my arm doesn't have quite enough flesh on it to cushion the plate. So all this time I've had chronic tendonitis and various sprains and strains in that arm. So I finally had the doctor take it out of me.

Holy hardware, Batman! No wonder this thing has been so painful. It's HUGE. And heavy! And look at the screws! SEVEN of them! Six of the screws (the shorter ones) attached the plate to my bone. The seventh and longer one went obliquely through my bone, holding the two sides of it together after it had been severed. (You'll have to read the old blog for details on that.) Self-tapping screws, I was informed by HB, who knows about tools and stuff.

So I once again have a cast on my right hand, this time for six weeks. (Last time it was for three months.) You'd think taking out the plate would be an easy process, and I guess it is, compared to the original surgery. But the recovery is still long, because now I have seven holes in my bone. As my doctor explained to me, according to the rules of physics (which I mostly slept through in high school, sorry Mr. Brennan), any pressure applied to an object goes directly to the weakest part, so until the holes fill back in again, I am at much higher risk for breaking my arm. You can just see some of the holes in this bad cell phone photo. Sitting in the doctor's office, I could see them all. It's a little freaky.

And of course, the obligatory Frankenstein photo of the incision, one week after surgery. Note where the doctor has written "YES" on my arm, to make sure he would perform the surgery on the correct appendage.

Ye Public Writer has been largely absent from this space due to actual work needing to be done, and the fact that I have been writing in private, back in my cozy little office, so no interesting public experiences to be shared. But with five more weeks of a cast on my hand, followed by several months of physical therapy, it seems I will be blogging again.