4-Months Update
Four months have passed since the surgery and it seems like a year. I am typing this myself using all of the fingers I used before I had the surgery. I started riding my Vespa ten days ago and have put 1,500 Km on it so far in the cold weather including the rain. I seem to be making up for the lost summer.
I still have not completed my own survey yet since I am still in the recovery mode and have not yet decided if I am completely or somewhat satisfied.
I have a CT Scan scheduled for this Friday and an MRI in 3-weeks to just get a complete picture of the end result and perhaps shed some light as to why my fingers were so swollen and are still stiff. They are stiff in the morning and when I do tedious work with them such as picking up nails or screws. Funny enough, they feel just fine when I am riding. Somehow my hand just takes over by itself and works the throttle and brakes with out an issue. I do not completely understand that.
As for pain, I do not have much at all. My fingers do not hurt, they are just stiff at times and my index finger seems to get a bit swollen at times (still). My wrist does not really hurt unless I overdue it. For example, last night I scoured cast iron pans in the sink and that pushing and rotating motion with pressure left my wrist a bit sore. Nothing to take pain killers, but noticeably sore.
I met with my surgeon on Thursday and he and the Hand Therapist were pleased with the improvement since the last two months. The swelling in my fingers really put my recovery behind by a month or two. I still get frustrated at times with my hand, but I am doing much more with it today than I was a month ago. My surgeon seems to feel that this improvement curve will continue.
One thing worth mentioning is that I had started taking these pills “Protandim” and after one week of taking them, my swelling had gone down and I no longer had a need for pain killers at night. I think I am sold on these and if anyone would like information about these please send me an e-mail at peter.sanderson@outlook.com. I have become a distributor for them.
I made an updated video so you can see my movement and the exercises I do. One note about the video is I did not mention the stretching exercises to bend my wrist which I do.
Proximal Row Carpectomy - PRC 
1 November was my 4 month anniversary. I golfed 18 holes that day. Probably the last time I’ll golf until next spring but it was also the first time I golfed a full 18 holes at one time. The wrist held up pretty good. I still have some slight pain on the pinky side of the wrist but it feels like it might have been a little more subdued compared to other times I golfed earlier in the month of Oct. On the days following that, I spent time cleaning up parts of a tree that fell in my yard due to a storm that blew through. I probably worked my left wrist and hand more than I had in the previous 6-8 months. I didn’t feel I needed to protect it much at all. I was able to start a chainsaw pulling with my left hand (A couple months prior I couldn’t get the chain saw started with my left hand). After cleaning up the tree branches, my hand did not feel unusually sore. My left forearm was sore and tight but that went away after a day or two.
In regards to pain/tightness at the base of the thumb in that meaty part of the palm, I kind of invented my own stretch to take some of the edge off the pain/tightness. I don’t know if it will work for anybody else, but here is what I did…
– Close your hand into a fist and make a ‘thumbs up’ sign
– Using your good hand hold the thumb in that position (straight up)
– Open your PRC hand then repeatedly close your PRC hand into a fist by starting with the joints towards the tips of your fingers. When you finish making the fist, the finger tips will be rolled up into the middle of your palm.
– For me it would feel tight in the meaty part of the palm/base of the thumb and I would also feel tightness on the palm side of the index finger.
– After doing this for a couple weeks, I would not feel tightness in these two areas while doing this exercise and even though I still have some soreness at the base of my thumb/palm, it is not as bad as it was before.
In regards to the pain on the pinky side of my wrist, I’m trying a ‘stretch’ to see if I can get rid of that pain. I don’t know if what I am doing is helping or not. I’ve been doing it for less than a week and it seems for wrist pain, it takes a month before I can tell if anything is getting any better. But here is what I’m doing, incase anybody else wants to try it…
– I hold my arm with the PRC wrist (left) staight out in front of me with the palm straigt down.
– Then I rotate my wrist clockwise 90 degrees so that my palm is facing off to my left. This triggers the slight discomfort on the pinky side of my wrist (specifically the discomfort is at the boney little knob that is part of the ulna bone)
-While holding my hand in this position, I lower it down and stick it between the seat cushions of the couch while I’m watching TV.
– Every 5 minutes or so I take my hand out of the seat cushions and rotate the wrist CW and CCW a couple times and then go back to all the way CW and stuff it in the seat cusion. I’ll do this for about a half hour.
– Think it will help with the discomfort on the pinky side of my wrist, but I don’t expect to know for sure until Dec comes around. I don’t think it is an agressive kind of maneuver and so I don’t think I’m doing myself any harm.