The Pain!, The Pain!, The Pain!!

It's been a long day here for me without a doubt. My hand surgery was this morning, and it seems to have been very successful, although we won't know for certain for a few months of observation and use. Right now though, I'm in a huge cast as you can see in the left photo and in some nasty pain. In addition to the regular trauma of the surgery, there is also a great deal of swelling at the moment. I have an appointment to see the doctor early next week to check on my progress and most likely out fit me with a new cast once the swelling has gone down.

The doctor ended up doing a completely different plan for fixing the hand. When he got inside he discovered that the arthritis was extremely severe, the damage was far greater than he had anticipated. As feared, there was no cartilage to cushion between the two bones, which resulted in grinding to the point that the grinding had smoothed the bone to the point of turning it into ivory. This is was a problem because he planned on fusing the two bones together, but they were now too smooth and it would not work as such. The solution then involved grinding both bones to a coarse surface and grafting a portion of another bone removed from my wrist so that the bones could be fused together. We went from fusing two bones to three. The bones are held together by a bunch of wires and screws. This is expected to take eight weeks to heal.

Previously, I was facing a definite loss of mobility in the hand as well as a decrease in strength, both would vary depending on the type of surgery that would be performed. Now that this new procedure was performed I have no idea what is going to go on. I hope to have more definitive answers after my appointment with him.

Today has been a very long and many times strange day. I am so completely not on my A game. I may not even be on my C game. That means there is a lot of slurring of words with long pauses between thoughts and statements and unsteadiness on my feet, which has only been exasperated through the pain medicine that I've had to take which is pretty darn strong, even for me. I think this weekend is going to be the litmus test for how I'm going to do throughout the whole thing.

The one real sad drawback has been my typing proficiency. Quite frankly it sucks butt. It took me an hour to type the first one and a half paragraphs of this, and then my wonderful wife, Mev, stepped in while I dictated. So if I'm slow in getting around to e-mails you know why. Wish me luck and I'll keep in touch.