Day 53 – Music Returns…

It is now day fifty-three and I have just returned from my second physiotherapy appointment. Today he started working on range of motion and manipulating my wrist and fingers. I also got to play with some pretty cool exercising equipment such as a type of rubber sheet stretched with round holes the size of my fingers. The idea with this exercise was to stretch open my fingers and placed them in a hole and pull the rubber together in the center. I also had a pretty cool hand gripping spring-loaded exercise unit that had a different spring for each finger. Next visit I will take a picture of it. This hand gripper allows me to exercise all my fingers at once plus individual fingers one of the time. They have five or six with different strength springs and I started with the weakest one. However I do feel that the weakest one is sufficient pulled the brake handle on my Vespa. However, my fingers are still very swollen and stiff. I cannot completely open my fingers and I cannot completely closed but they are definitely much better than they were a month ago.

My fingers still are swollen and they do ache from time to time. I seem to be doing more with them even though I do not notice a huge improvement with my thumbs range of motion. For example I was able to cut a lime and a lemon yesterday while cooking. My wrist seems to be very strong but it only moves in the direction towards the inside of the wrist and I cannot move it upwards in the opposite direction. Before the operation and after I had cracked my lunate bone I could also not move in that direction. Before I cracked the lunate bone I am not certain how much I could move it in that direction since I never really paid attention. However, the physiotherapist was able to move it in that direction today even though I could not move it voluntarily. So I assume that I will start to gain some movement in that direction. I think I have about 30 to 40% movement towards the inside of my wrist and about 5% at the moment in the opposite direction.

Last night I had company and I was able to prepare a wonderful Thai coconut soup, a homemade salad dressing as well as cleaned the kitchen and get ready for company. Of course that is not all that we ate since my wife had prepared the main course last night and it was ready to put in the oven. But before dinner and while I was cooking I was able to do something that I could not do before which will bring great pleasure to my life. Rather than write about it I made a quick video with my phone just before dinner…

I’m slowly gaining the necessary hand movements and strength to be able to ride my Vespa again. I am hoping that I will be good to go by September. The physiotherapist told me that I could start swimming again for exercising and to just use some common sense with respect to my wrist. Funny enough my wrist is not hurt and is just stiff or does not move in the direction I want it to. Most of my pain still is in my fingers and my thumb and therefore often will center in the palm of my hand. But this is getting less and less each day.