Frank, Like you, the scar is looking really good now, but my pinkie finger wants to shrink into my palm, too. The palm itself also becomes tight. I'm told it is because of the formation of scar tissue during the first 5 weeks or so after surgery. I found that if I leave my hand out of the splint for several hours, my pinkie will curl to about 40 - 45 degrees. I have had to fight to get it back by soaking my hand in warm water and then coaxing it back with exercises to about 5 degrees, and stretching and massaging my palm. (I still have some swelling at the PIP joint.)

Now, as much as I like the freedom without the splint, I've decided just to leave it on for the next few weeks except to shower, do the PT exercises, and prepare meals. I do hope the result will be a permanently straighter finger...

I think you mentioned before that you were not wearing the splint. Is it painful for you? Mine is just inconvenient. (Like typing - ! Whew! What an understatement!) Where it was uncomfortable (too much bend in the wrist), I asked the PT to adjust it. Perhaps yours needs some tweaking?

Hi Trubleu and Dave
It would appear we are all at a similar stage of recovery. I had to stop
wearing my night splint for a short period because it was not letting the
wound heal. I am now wearing it again at night. The splint itself does
not cause any problem, it is comfortable and it does not chafe.
In the morning my finger is fairley straight but the problem is when I
remove the splint my whole hand is stiff.It takes half the day to get my
hand to the stage where I can make a fist, or as near to what you might call a fist. By bedtime the finger is back to 45 degrees.
The weather has improved here so I spent a day in the garden, the
constant work throughtout the day really loosened the hand and I could
open and close the hand very well but again by evening time the
finger was pulled well back into the hand. It would appear we are in no
win situation here. I suppose we are all making headway, all be it slow frustrating headway.
We may have to settle for some degree of bend in the finger.
Good luck to all.
Frank.

BIGFRANK

I am unaware of any studies showing there is direct correlation between Dups and FS, however the connection is similar to the connection with the same problem in the feet and penis. This connective tissue disorder is a buildup of rouge scar tissue under the skin in the first three manifestations and within the *joint* of the shoulder in the fourth. I believe Bios Collegenase is expected to be a treatment for FS eventually.

My personal experience is that I while in recovery for an Open Surgery for Dups on my left hand I developed FS on that same arm. I don't need statistics to know there is a connection. So, we have identified four manifestations of this disease. One wonders if there are others that we don't know about. Problems with the hip for instance.

Hi Jim, unfortunately our forum sw has a bug and can't handle long links. The link came through OK in the e-mail notification but in the forum it is only partially activated as link and a ";" is wrongly inserted. This bug will be fixed, as usual, in the next release, which is due early June.

Sorry about that!
Wolfgang

Quote:

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They're closely connected, and part of a group of conditions called superficial fibromatoses.

This abstract shows the high statistical correlation between DC and FS.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query...md=Retrieve&;db=PubMed&list_uids=11307078&dopt=Abstract

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Jim:

Thanks.

I've always suspected a connection between my frozen shoulder & my Dups.

Mark