I'm weighing up surgery on my thumb joints

I have been posting about my mini "tight rope surgery " on October 8th but my post must have been deleted. In them I mentioned my doctor and my hospital - I guess that must be against the rules???? So now I am at almost 4 weeks. My hand is still sore and weak but very flexible. At 4 weeks I will be able to add a couple more exercises with 25% pressure on my flat hand. They want to make sure the incision has heal prior to a lot pressure. I am so excited to be able to flatten my hand!! I have been able to do all PT at home and only wear my brace at night and when I might be in a dangerous situation. Typing and those types of activities are easy!! At six weeks I return to doctor and PT and will find out what the new rules are!!! So far VERY happy!!!

Yesterday (November 13, 2108) was six weeks since my CMC LRTI surgery on my right hand. For the past two weeks I have been wearing a very small neoprene wrap-around splint. It is so nice not having the cast covering up my hand and arm. It is also great being able to remove it. I take it off when showering and when doing exercises. If I am sitting and reading I take it off.

I have had four physical therapy/occupational therapy sessions so far. All is going extremely well. I have almost no pain in my thumb joint. It is so nice to see that the bulge of bone is gone and my hand looks normal again. I have some swelling every morning, but after exercises and ice it is back to normal. My therapist is working on my thumb and my wrist. The wrist lacks normal movement after being in the casts for four weeks. It is getting better every day. The therapist measures the angles of my thumb, wrist, hand and I am recovering my range of motion.

My therapist said that I still should not use my thumb to pinch or grasp anything other than very light weight. She has me picking up marbles with my thumb and finger to get mobility back in the joint. I can grasp a plastic cup. I no longer need assistance bathing or getting dressed. I've been doing that for the past two weeks since the cast came off. I am preparing easy meals that are mostly heating up the food. No serious chopping or stirring yet. I can't pick up pots with food in them as they are too heavy for my thumb. But every day I can do more! As others have mentioned, doing the physical therapy is very important. I do my exercises three times a day without fail.

I did make one mistake that I want to share with you. I asked my surgeon for dissolvable sutures as in the past it has been extremely painful when I have sutures removed. I thought the dissolvable sutures would be soft, like thread. But they were stiff and spiky. They rubbed against my splint. My therapist cut them down, but they were still irritating me, especially when massaging the incision to prevent the scar tissue from building up. I had about 8 sutures (16 holes with spiky bits). By last weekend all but one had gone away. The last one went away today. That made me very happy! It would have been better to have a few minutes of pain while having regular sutures removed than two weeks of irritation. I will definitely have regular sutures when I have my left thumb surgery in a few months.

Bottom line.........I am very happy that I had this done. I am also happy that I did it on my dominant hand first. I am sorry to hear that some of you are having problems after your surgery. I wish you well. I hope that those of you contemplating this surgery do as well as I am doing.

Has anyone had the "mini tightrope" CMC surgery? The surgeon removes the trapezium bone but does not harvest a tendon. Instead they use a very small wire to attach the thumb to the index finger. This acts as a splint inside the hand and allows faster recovery. Not many surgeons do this surgery because it is new (about 7 years). However the results are encouraging so far and recovery time is half compared to when the tendon harvested surgery.