Everyone is different to some degree. What information has your doctor given you as far as what to expect? Follow-up with physical therapy?
Are you having 1 hand done or both at the same time?
I'd say immediately following surgery an open ct release , make sure you have pain medication, if needed; keep hand elevated as much as possible
( above heart height), and ice it for the first few days.
There is some good information at the websites listed in the archives at this site that might be of good help too. Some of them list hand exercises.
.
Everyone is different to some degree. What information has your doctor given you as far as what to expect? Follow-up with physical therapy?
Are you having 1 hand done or both at the same time?
I'd say immediately following surgery an open ct release , make sure you have pain medication, if needed; keep hand elevated as much as possible
( above heart height), and ice it for the first few days.
There is some good information at the websites listed in the archives at this site that might be of good help too. Some of them list hand exercises.
.
The surgeon says he does not know what is causing the tip of my middle finger to be hypersensitive. I had none of these symptoms before the surgery. Did you also have the sweating problem with your hand also? How did they determine you had nerve damage and what caused the damage. How long did it take for your swelling to go down. Also I would like to thank you for your reply.
2005chrysler,
My hand was different after the surgery than before too. I didn't have the hypersensitivity before the surgery. The ortho surgeon kept telling me he didn't do anything wrong, but when the physician assistant who works under him, tells me that it can take nerves 1 cm a month to regenerate, that tells me they know about the nicked nerve at time of surgery. It was a few fascicles ( nerves are bundles of fascicles), but it affected my hand and it's use big time. I went for a second opinion to a world renowned clinic in Minnesota and was told to go home and live with it....that it was damage from before the surgery and not from the surgery. I then got a name of a hand doctor in the Twin Cities area. He did an extended ct release and discovered the nicked fascicles. He tried to line up the unconnected ends as best as he could without further damaging the nerve, but told me it would never be 100%.
I called the original ortho surgeon and told him about it. His reply was...."that is why we have you sign the release to go ahead with surgery in spite of risks." He told me he'd never had a patient end up with a bad outcome. He said the same thing to a friend of mine, who went to him for a consult. When she said she had a friend, who had complications from the surgery, he told her, then her friend didn't have the surgery at his facility. No one had ever had complications. LIAR!
Initially, I had symptoms that fit RSD ( it is another health topic on healthboards).
One of the symptoms can be the sweating on only on affected hand. But usually, there are more symptoms, like whole hand feeling like it is burned...constant pain. Light touch, like blowing air or soft fabric draping over area is more painful than actually touching something with purpose, like putting hand on arm with some pressure ( usually) In RSD, the affected body part may turn red, swell, get hot, cold, without a normal trigger, while the rest of body stays normal. Cold affects it more than warm, and my hand loves to be warm. It gets upset when cold....even air conditioner in car makes it hurt.
I take amytriptyline for nerve pain.
Anyway, if I were you, I'd try to have some occupational therapy or physical therapy desensitizing or see a doctor for a diagnosis before it becomes something ugly like RSD. It may not be RSD, but neuropathy of some type, but if RSD is treated early, it can be controlled or put into remission. If left too long, the prognosis for remission of symptoms isn't very good, and it can spread so it affects both hands, or hands and arms or hands, arms, legs, and feet....
