Getting Surgery..
 

For the past year, i've had a terrible pain in my left wrist when playing hockey or going to the gym. I waited until now to get it looked at, because i was up at school. I got an MRI on it and took it to a hand specialist, and he said i have a torn ligament in my wrist, probably the result of a hockey injury.

I have to go in for surgery on Friday, July 22nd at 6 AM in the city. I read up on anesthesia because that is the part that is slightly disconcerting about the arthroscopic procedure. In 2003, about the same time i was diagnosed with "variable blood pressure", i had my wisdom teeth out, and had anesthesia with no side effects. I'm hoping all goes well again.

Since i was diagnosed, i began playing hockey again, running 2 miles a day and also going the gym. I starting eating much better (haven't touched fast food in over a year). I went back for another visit to cornell medical center in the city, where i was first tested and diagnosed, a few months ago and he said i was in excellent health. My blood pressure was 110/70 consistently, where in the past it would fluctuate between 140/80 and 120/70 within seconds.

After the surgery i will have to be in a hard cast for 6 weeks, which brings me almost up until i go back to college (about 4 days prior). It could have been worse, but still kind of stinks because hockey starts the day we get back, and i will need a few weeks to rehab my wrist first.

I also am kind of upset that i won't be reaching my summer goal of being able to bench press 275. That's a lot for me, i'm only 150 lbs currently, but i was well on my way to that goal before this news.

This has turned into quite a rant ;). In any event, if you don't hear from me after the 22nd, well you know why!

Good Luck. :)

Yes, best wishes, MBHockey. I hope it all comes out OK. Sounds like you're in pretty good shape going in to this. :)

Best wishes, MBHockey. :)

Good luck!!

good luck MB.

just don't rush eating post-op. last time i was under general i *thot* i was feeling pretty good. ate some dinner and spent the rest of the evening wondering if it would stay down.

on the bright side, you may up your one-handed typing speed...that could come in seriously handy when you fully recover ;)

One handed posts for you for the next few months old boy! I guess that rules out breakdancing too....

best wishes.

Haha. Thanks for all your support guys...i'll report back when i get home Friday evening. :)

Cat in a cast
 

Best wishes!

I once saw a cat in a cast. Strange this is it would regularly twitch muscles near its cast. The owner told me that it was actually selective exercising its muscles to keep them in shape.

Don’t know if she was pulling my leg. But I certainly wish I had had that kind of muscle control when I was in a cast some years ago. Would have loved to keep in shape so that my arm didn’t look like a slimmed down version of my other one when the doc removed it.

I wonder if that can be learned. Unfortunately when I asked the cat how he did it, alle he did was look at me with this silent, feline know-it-all expression, and I was none the wiser.


Best of luck with the surgery!

-- ArcticStones

hey guys...i just got back...it went well. the doctor said the damage was worse than he could see on the MRI, so in addition to the arthroscopy they also had to make a 4 inch incision into the top of my forearm and use wires to hold the bones together or something. :eek:

so in a week, i'll get this enormous soft cast replaced with a hard one, and it'll be on for 8 weeks. i'm in a lot more pain than i thought i'd be, to the point where i'm considering taking the pain pills they prescribed (i didn't take any pills after i got my wisdom teeth out!) just so i can get some sleep

typing with one hand is really awful!!

are there any good speech-to-text programs for the Mac that anyone could recommend?

thanks for all your support...i really appreciate it! :)

So, the B in MBHockey now stands for Borg, eh?

Glad to hear it was sucessful. Get well quickly and efficiently.

Go Bruins!

http://pages.prodigy.net/oldchl/bruinlogo.jpg

best wishes on a speedy recovery.

i really hated the drugs. they did help for some sleep which was good in the long run, i guess. dunno what they prescribed for you. but, i had vicodan. i found they didnt help the pain one little bit. but, i just didnt care about it. i remember thinking at the time "this really hurts like crap, but, i just don't care. this is really disturbing."

maybe you can just podcast your posts now ;)

pic from the weekend:

http://homepage.mac.com/mbh0ckey/IMG_1052.JPG

the only reason i was smiling was because my girlfriend (the girl on the left) was here being my nurse :)

Nice. Nurse on! :)

update
 

Hey guys, it's been a while since my surgery, and i just wanted to let you know how i was doing :)

Every two weeks I've had to go back to the doctor to get my cast changed. Every one of those cast changes have gone smoothly, until my last one.

I had been having this very sharp pain in both sides of my wrist whenever i rotated my wrist, and i figured, i just had surgery, so it should hurt.

A few days ago i went for my last cast change, and when they took it off, i got a little weak in the knees when i looked at my wrist, since one of the five metal pins had somehow poked its way, a quarter of an inch through, my wrist (the blunt end, no less)

There's something disconcerting about looking down and seeing a piece of metal sticking out of your arm that you are 100% shouldn't be there.

So, i took pictures with my camera phone...the quality is quite poor, so it's not that gross.

here are the links for any interested:
x-ray
wrist

So after they found that metal pin sticking out, i noticed there are two others on the other side of my wrist almost sticking out. When i say almost sticking out, i mean, i can visually see them trying to poke through my skin on that side, and it's very gross to the touch.

Turns out those sharp pains were the pins poking through my skin!

The doctor up here (since i'm at school) called the doctor who performed the surgery, who instructed the doctor up here to pull it out. He told me it would hurt, and he couldn't really numb it. I watched him do it, it was pretty bad. It didn't really hurt, since, i think, the other end of the pin was stuck in a bone, and he just took these pliar looking things, and started yanking. It was done after about a minute, but i had a decent sized, perfectly round, hole in my wrist, which was pretty gross too.

Anyway, i'm fine now, and i finally get this cast off (for good) October 3rd, at which time, my doctor at home will remove the remaining four pins giving me a local anesthetic in my left arm. If all goes well, i should be back in business a month from Oct. 3rd.

Sorry for the lengthy post!

Glad to have you back :D

Sorry to hear that you ended up being treated by a pretty frankensteinian team of surgeons.

Hopefully the other nails will behave as expected and you'll recover full mobility in spite of all their efforts to torture you.

Best wishes for your recovery.

Recovering from medical treatment
 

.

When I was travelling around Europe some years ago, I met an American who told me about his own accident.

He had been skiing high up in the Alps, far from any ski resort. Well, he fell and broke his leg very badly. It was a highly complex fracture, twisting as it broke.

Somehow he made it to a nearby village – he couldn’t remember how. The local "medical expertise" put his leg in traction. Apparently anaesthetics were not deemed a crucial part of the treatment.

After he spent the better part of a day screaming at them, they finally granted his demand to drive him to the nearest hospital in the city. So they put him in the back of a van or ambulance, traction and all.

As they drove down the winding mountain road, apparently at breakneck speed, the suspended weights attached to his leg swung freely, tugging every which way – and making the tractional force, shall we say, rather variable.

He was in utter agony. And finally he passed out from the pain.

When the doctor at the hospital came out to the car to receive him, he was so astonished that he fell silent for many seconds. Then he observed rather tersely: “I have never seen a set-up quite like that before.”

The avid skier spent a month in that hospital, recovering from his injury – and his medical treatment.

* * *

I wish you a full and speedy recovery, MBHockey!


With best regards,
ArcticStones

.

Ugh! Horror story. If it was a U.S. Ski Resort, they would probably send a helicopter if you call on your cell phone while still up the mountain!

Oh man ArcticStones...that is horrible.

Voldenuit, your post made me laugh out loud :)

I got the cast off the other day, after 10 long weeks! He also took out the remaing four pins, which was awful!

I was doing okay until the fourth pin, i probably shouldn't have watched the whole time, but i was too curious. Anyway, i started feeling kind of queasy, and then i had to lie down because -- warning, this is gross -- when he lifted my wrist to bandage it, i saw a pool of blood on the table and blood flowing out of my arm like water falls off it during a shower.

At that point, i became very dizzy, started seeing spots, and all the sounds in the room became very muffled, and i was sweating like crazy. I have become used to that feeling though -- it's the feeling i get every time i give blood towards the end, so i wasn't too nervous.

However, my mom fainted. She went to walk outside because she couldn't watch anymore and just collapsed on the floor! I was fine after a couple of minutes and a cold glass of water, but it took my mom about 3 days to feel completely better. Luckily she didn't hit her head or anything.

I start therapy in a few days, and my wrist is extremely stiff. It feels better every day, and i can't wait to get therapy underway.

Thanks for all your support!

Thanks for the updates, and glad to hear things are moving along, even if painfully so. Speedy recovery!

I can take alot, but there was one time this happened to me. I was learning to climb a telephone pole using gaffs (those leg braces with the spike) during my cable TV installer days. The idiot I was with did not tell me how to rotate around the pole correctly and I ended up kicking the spike through my boot and right into my heel. I was in terrible pain and stuck up on the pole. I had to kick my way down using the damaged heel. When I got down, I hopped to the truck to call for help. I took off my boot and my partner (the idiot) poured at least one cup of my B+ onto the curb. I know just what those spots look like. It's called "going into shock".

Some fascinating things happen to you when you go into shock, don't they? Did any of you find yourself saying strange things, or joking around?