Experience since the surgery:

1st day: honestly, not a lot of fun. I was prescribed 5mg oxycodone and 10/325 Norco... and needed it. I could take both every 4 hours and did so... but was in some pain for the last 2 hours of every dosing schedule. Opiates screw with your GI tract.. and I had some problems with nausea from the meds.

Day 2: MUCH better. Little pain towards the end of my schedule. No nausea -- as long as I made sure to put food in my stomach before meds. You won't be hungry -- but eat crackers or anything else to buffer the pain meds.

Day 3 to 7: Rapidly diminishing need to take anything. By the end of the week I was off of any pain meds.

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After surgery, my first visit was at Cal Pacific Medical Center's Hand Therapy unit.

On my first day, they molded a splint for my hand and taught me how to care for my surgical incisions. Until told otherwise... I'd be cleaning, dressing, and splinting my hand on a daily basis. 95% was easy to do... but the first few times around I had to ask a friend to help me out with getting things right. No real physical therapy that week.

2nd week: real PT. Learned to do passive and active flexion exercises. Some slightly uncomfortable pushing my range-of-motion... which is a good thing. Surgical incisions still not healed... but beginning GENTLE extension exercises.

3rd week: more aggressive PT... including more active extension and strong massage to prevent adhesion as incisions heal. It's a bit uncomfortable, but easily manageable. Spending some time with splint off during normal activity. Hand healed enough that I don't need to dress it... incisions fully closed... just keeping the incisions moisturized at this point. As soon as the incision is healed (next few days) we're going to move on to more extension work.

Frankly... if my hand were frozen where it is now, I'd consider the surgery to have been worthwhile. I'd much rather have my hand stuck in an "more open" position than frozen shut. A lot of the stuff I enjoy doing requires the ability to wear gloves and put my hand around things (specifically: riding a motorcycle and manipulating the throttle and front brake). I'm already a lot better off for doing things like that... and based on how fast I'm progressing with the PT, expect I'll get a lot more back over the next 2 months.

The ring finger that saw the surgery is still REALLY pissed off and swollen. Surgeon said she had to really crank on it to get it to extend after 2+ years of being frozen in place... and to expect at least 2 months of it being puffed up. Pinky next to it (which wasn't operated on) is also pissed off and painful... and I'm told it's a result of being splinted to its neighbor.

All-in-all... I've double my range of motion in the problematic finger in two weeks... the incision on my palm is almost totally healed... and the incision up my finger is 90% healed and looks great. This is MUCH better progress than I anticipated.

That said... I've also been RELIGIOUS about my physical therapy... having experience with this process before. I can't express how important it is to your success as a patient to follow these instructions. If you want a good outcome, listen to your doctors and PT staff!

Edited 05/08/12 06:13

In your therapy are you working on trying to make a fist at this stage? After my surgery once I could make a fist and could flex my hand comfortably it was good to go after that.

Just curious, have they told you to keep the hand moisturized throughout the healing process?

Edited 05/08/12 20:11

spanishbuddha:

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Thanks for sharing your story, and best wishes for the outcome over the next few weeks/months.

Surgery gets a hard time on this forum so it's useful to have some real experience.

I can't see your photo's, needs a Yahoo login, can you make them public? Do you have a 'before' photo too?

I don't have a "before" photo of my right hand... but here's one of my left. Right hand only had contracture on ring finger. Left hand has same degree of contracture (110 degrees)... but everything except the thumb on the left is involved. Right hand was a much more simple surgery than the left will be, should I decide to go that route.

Here's the left hand:

Edited 05/15/12 03:45

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Right hand as of today -- one month and one day after surgery.

No scabbing left. Doing PT twice weekly with a therapist (and every hour on my own as much as possible). We're getting more serious about extension exercises... using rolling exercises and clay to stretch things out. I'm probably about a week away from getting re-splinted to help keep the finger from naturally trying to contract as scar tissue forms (have to wait for the incision to heal and become strong enough to take the stretching). Again, pain is zero. I set my phone to remind me hourly during the day to do my work :-)

My hand now spends about 50% of its time in a splint (and all night, overnight). I can open it about 90% without effort, and close the affected finger to within 3/4" of my palm. Huge progress over a short period -- in my opinion. I'm an avid cook... and it has been amazing to pick up a knife again and use it with my whole hand. Same goes for the other little things in life... picking up a bottle of beer... playing ping-pong with friends... carrying shopping bags, etc. Constantly being reminded about things I can do better now.

If this is the full extent of what I get out of the surgery -- I'm happy. But I don't think that's the case. If there's one thing I'd like to hammer home again, it's, "DO YOUR PT!" If makes a HUGE difference, and I fully expect to get a lot more out of this by working at it.

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