I realized recently that I posted a few months ago that I was not able to get carpal tunnel surgery, and then stopped posting for a while. Whoops. This can be chalked up to finishing my graphic design portfolio (I’m done!!) but also, much more importantly:
I actually absolutely did get surgery.
What? I thought you were like, not eligible.
Me too. So I went to go get a second opinion, whereupon the new doctor (in the same hospital, mind you) went “What? The test he gave you only works to find carpal tunnel in old people. You’re too young for that kind of nerve damage to show up. You absolutely have carpal tunnel, when would you like to schedule the surgery?”
So basically thanks a lot, first guy. You set me back hard. I will never forgive you.
The surgery itself
⚠️WARNING! I AM GOING TO POST PICTURES OF MY SURGERY THROUGHOUT. THEY ARE NOT GRAPHIC, BUT THEY ARE STILL KIND OF GROSS. IF THAT KIND OF THING ISN’T YOUR JAM, NO SHAME IN CLICKING AWAY. ⚠️
I rolled in nervously on April 22 and was immediately greeted with a massive needle. They injected a serious numbing agent into my arm, along with this weird clotting chemical that stops blood from reaching my hand. Which was good, because they were about to stick a metal tube in there, and they didn’t want blood shooting everywhere. This was very reassuring to hear from the nurse, especially considering I was going to be awake the entire time. Immediately my head was filled with images of my arm becoming some sort of iron man plasma blast of blood.
It was very disconcerting to see the white lines where the agent had chased the blood out of my veins. Never had I been so aware of the fact that my body is filled with little blue tubes until they were no longer blue.
Then it was time for the iodinebath!
Successfully sterilized and looking like some sort of serial killer oompa loompa, it was finally time for the actual surgery itself to begin. They sat me in a tall chair, surrounded my arm with a blue tarp (with a hole cut for where the actual incision needed to be done) and then the much-too-casual surgeon rolled in.
“Alright!” he said. “Which finger are we amputating?” Now, I love doing a bit with my doctor, so of course I replied enthusiastically with “all of them!” He didn’t seem to know where to go from there, and sort of lapsed into a professional silence. Darn.
Of course, shortly after this failed bit, all of the humor drained with the situation, because they cut me open. Obviously I was in no pain, but I could still feel what was happening down there. Just gentle tugs and pokes, really. But there was another problem: I could hear all of it. I could hear the horrible clunk of the pins holding my wrist open, the extending selfie-stick sound of the tube being inserted, and the absolutely wretched little wet noises my wrist was making as they poked around in there.
Now, I have an absolutely random level of squeamishness. There is no predicting it. Some days, I could probably lose a leg and mildly hop myself to the hospital to get it fixed. Others, a single scrape might make me need to sit down. The experience of being reminded that I only have a soft skin shell protecting all of my vulnerable, leaky, squishy bits was a decidedly squeamish one. Immediately I became so lightheaded that I could barely hear anything. My vision was super blurry and had dark tunnels around the edges. I had sort of expected to be squeamish this time around, so I had turned on an episode of Taskmaster to distract me. But mostly what happened was that I was in an altered, hazy state of panic, made worse by the haunting sound of british voices cracking jokes.
My lovely mother came over and gave me sips of water and rubbed my non-sliced arm to try and calm me, which helped. A random nurse shoved an alcohol wipe under my nose, which very much did not. The nauseating fumes immediately made me twice as lightheaded. I had to mumble “please, no, I’ll pass out.” and eventually she took it away. Then the surgeon announced he was done, and a different guy sauntered in (more casual than the first!) and stitched me up in record time.
Now my hand was in a thick, club-shaped bandage. It was actually very soft! Also, please note that I pained my fingernails to look like hazard signs for the surgery because I thought the surgeons would find it funny. I don’t think they noticed.
Recovery
I went back to work the next day, because I am a knucklehead.
I spent the next two weeks fumbling around, doing everything left-handed. Every once in a while, I would make the terrible mistake of stretching my hand out too far, and I would suddenly become very aware of every stitch complaining loudly. It felt a little bit like catching a bullet.
Recovery itself was pretty boring, but once I got my bandage off, something far more exciting can happen—scar progress pictures! Woohoo! Clap if you’re excited. I couldn’t clap during this time, because it would sound less like clap clap clap and more like ow ow ow.
This was the day they took off the bandage. Note the gross little bleached patch where the first bandage had been applied, and the ugly dark purple bruise of my wrist recovering from losing its tendon seatbelt.
A few days later, the gross bruise hadn’t budged, but the incision site itself was beginning to close up nicely. The stitches were mostly dissolved.
A week later, the stitches were completely dissolved.
A week after that, the dead skin around the incision peeled away, and left me with a very stiff, firm scar. Much thicker than I’d have liked. I’ve been massaging it, but I won’t lie, it’s still very stiff.
I took this one ten minutes ago. You’ll notice it’s sort of coalesced into two braided lumps, sort of like a single strand of DNA. You’ll also notice that the bruise still hasn’t fully gone away, even though we’re almost two months out from surgery. I’m beginning to hate her.
Well, did it work? Was it worth it?
Yes! There are still times where, if I draw too much, my wrist will hurt for a couple of hours. This is just because my wrist is very sensitive and delicate still, and might be forever. The good news is, though, that the pain goes away after that and doesn’t stick around for two years straight. Most importantly, my hand doesn’t shake anymore! It used to be that I couldn’t hold it still at all. It would spasm and tremble 24/7. Now I can hold it still again! It’s really exciting.
So, anticlimactically, that’s how it ends. Worth it!
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