Wrist very stiff 3months after surgery

Hi im sorry for injury and concern. Hope by now you must be feeling better? I have had metal plate put into my wrist and suffering experience you have been having. I have just yesterday seen consultant who perform my op. He didn't seem to want answer any questions or my concerns. It was a ambulance driver in a shop who looked at my hand. ..and told me that it should not be this swollen! !! Its been 6 weeks and they just tell me its my fault! Do more exercises. Well i am and i do but after sleeping im back to square one. I feel to save up and go get second opinion. Feel totally alone and worried.

yes, surgery may damage our nerves, that's why we got wrist drop. I cant raise my wrist since I underwent a humerus surgery, it's almost a month now. I don't know wheter it may heal or not.

Hi All.

I'm following this with interest. I'm femal & 52 years of age in the U.K.

I had a fall at home 20th April & have a colles fracture of my left wrist (thankfully the left) which resulted in surgery while my hip was being fixed and K -Wires inserted.

So far have been doing excersises as told but it's still really stiff & my all my fingers still feel sore & stiff.

I can make a fist but only about half way.Wrist bends, not good about 25% lift and i still have a pain,tenderness & stiffness on my little finger side & my ulna bone.

My thumb is quite mobile now & seems to have stopped the clicking & grinding which was making me squirm when I did the excersises.

I don't use the wrist guard at all from waking & only put it on to sleep as I'm worried I do damage or something when I'm flat out snoring.!! Ha ha !!

I do the ones for shoulders etc every morning & so far have had no shoulder pain and also introduced a breast stroke swimming one, & out reach as well as the palms up & down and the elbow bends that I was told to do.

I've not had any physio at all almost 12 weeks on as I am housebound upstairs to both bedrooms,having broke my neck of femur when I had the fall so have just done all that time touch bearing with a gutter frame because obviously I can't even get out to the hospital appointment. 

Worriyngly no one has contacted from the clinic but then there's nothing really they could say as they removed my pot, xrayed, pulled out the K wires & gave me six more weeks "prison sentence" and said see you next appointment.

Even the hand I'm thinking is totally jiggered. never mind the hip..Next appointment at trauma clinic is this Friday the 14th so they will be able to see how I'm doing.

Hello,

I am a 64 year-old female who had a left radial fracture on 4/27/17 and a subsequent ORIF with plates and 7 screws on 4/28/17. I attend OT 3 times/week. Pain is 8-10/10 most of the time. Hand is always swollen despite wearing compression glove. I can now almost complete supine/probate but have hardly any strength in the hand. I can make half a fist but have tremors in my fingers when I make a fist. Doc says "this isn't orthopedic." Didn't have tremors before injury. Fingers feel like they've been nailed to a wall and somebody is constantly punching them. That's how sore they feel. Flexion and extension of the wrist is only 30 degrees at this time. Recently developed left shoulder pain that makes my eyes bug out. Still unable to sleep through the night because the pain wakes me up. Was taking Tramadol but doc won't prescribe anymore, so I'm pretty much on Tylenol or Advil. Very frustrating. I anticipate I will be in therapy at least until Christmas.

I'm two months out and I can't make a fist or point my hand upwards.  Fingers hurt, wrist hurts and I'm starting to fear I'll be a permanent invalid!  My fracture was a Smiths (reverse Collies) and I have a plate and screws.  My arm is all bone at this point and I'm losing hope of a recovery.

Hi. Have either Of you had any more improvement I can make a fist now fully but still get stiffness in my fingers. My wrist is still swollen slightly. I an still attending physio for my hip but she seems to think I've gone about as far as I can with my wrist. I'm using a 1kg weight to exercise now but it's nowhere near back to how it was. Daily I can do pretty much most things but lids.lifting objects still bad. This is 5 months in so when I check back today from last time I can see I have made progress . Enen not sleeping in the wrist guard. You will get there. It takes time sadly.

Hello everyone! I have been browsing your post for some time during my healing phase and thought now that I'm at a place of nearly healed I would come give you guys some info from this side of the pond (USA) and the timeline so far with my Colles fracture. First of all, thank y'all for posting about this because I didn't have a lot of info to go on post falling. You gals have helped me a lot! 

Here we go: Fall onto wooden steps after tripping on a fan cord getting out of bed 5/10/17. Passes out due to low blood pressure and dehydration so was taken by ambulance to ER. X-rays taken showed a distal radius fracture nondisplaced. Bunny cast (soft semi rigid material) put on. I was told to call ortho hand specialist within two days. *Note: this is where it all went wrong lol. Apparently they would prefer to fix them the same day of trauma if possible before it starts swelling because within 10-14 days the muscles begin to atrophy and recovery is much much harder* 

Saw ortho hand specialist 7 days post trauma. He was too busy to see me in clinic before that and the swelling had started  

I thought he was going to put a cast on...wrong. He said it was "distracted" and I needed surgery for an atomic alignment. 🙈 

It's my right dominant hand of course lol.

Surgery done the following Tuesday (13 days post falling). Mind you the atrophy of muscles had now started so I wasn't going to be able to do the exercises they like you to do in the days after surgery.

Surgery was with k-wires (one broke off and surgeon had to cut opening bigger to get it out = more scar tissue later).

They don't tell you about the awful pain the night after surgery either lol That was awful. Thank God it really (should) go away shortly after it peaks that first night. Sometimes the casting is too tight and you might have to return to ER to get it loosened. Having a fan blowing on my hand was the only way I could sleep that night for a few hours.

After a few days of taking pain pills and not being able to walk without getting dizzy, I stopped taking them and took Advil and Tylenol religiously. Ice ice ice and more ice ?????? 

10 days post surgery (now almost a month after trauma) I get stitches out and bunny splint off. This was soooo scary and my arm and hand looked decrepit. I couldn't move anything - no fingers or wrist movement. I was also really scared to let the nurses or hand therapist touch it at all. They were able to make a shabby fitting removable cast though that day.  

One week later I began hand therapy. Wow. I had like nothing lol my arm was skinny like Angelina Jolie's lol 😂🙈 scary! 

My measurements were pretty bad, but she started getting me ready for massage and paraffin wax treatments and she cleaned off the scales on my hands. I had not washed my hand since before surgery lol...gross I know. 

It took me from 6/14/17 until 8/30/17 to complete hand therapy, where I was at about 80% usage. I was at maybe 1-2% when I started. 

I can give you details about the timeline of that if anyone needs or wants it but it's a lot to type it all lol

In short, the first two months I did not make much progress at all, then after I knew it was healed by seeing an x-ray, I was much better about pushing myself. 

I developed frozen shoulder from holding the arm up near my chest a lot. I'm in therapy for that now and it's getting better thankfully!  

It took me about 10 or 11 weeks before I could remotely make a fist. And even now the fingers are tight especially in the morning.

My wrist will move to almost where it was before except wrist flexion, I had a ton more than normal prior to the break but she says what I have now is closer to what most people have. I had something called lax ligaments. ?? But the only way to get it into those positions is to push it with another hand or against something. It won't go there on its own and I still have very little muscle tissue in that whole arm and hand.  

I have tightness in area near ulnar-radial joint and I understand this can be normal for 5 months out if you've got scar tissue and delayed treatment like mine.  

My primary doc says from all ages seem thru the years it takes at least 6-12 months to even feel remotely normal again and more like two years to get normal, and up to 4 years to get all your movement back. 

Right now I'm focusing on the therapy exercise bands to help pull down on my wrist and stretch out my shoulder/scapula. 

Big thing that I'm thankful for: broken bones like this aren't like a stroke patient where you have limited time to recover. This doesn't work the same way and it's normal to take years to recoup fully.  So don't get discouraged my friends. 

If you guys have any questions, I'll be happy to try to help answer them too. 

Thank you for all the info that helped me these last five months, you folks are awesome!