I put telly on at 2.30am and watched the Oscars through to breakfast time as I couldn’t sleep. In the morning I removed the outer bandaging for first time as I was told to after 48 hours, it was a little early but I was curious. I immediately noticed a lack of support and slight increase in pain (6/10), I had to rest it a long while on the pile of padding removed afterwards to settle it down. I took my MST tablet as soon as I could at 7.30am. My plan today was to reduce the amount of oramorph I use as I want to be off the Morphine as quickly as possible. I was still experiencing twitching and the occasional cramping in fingers.
When I had removed the outer dressing I first noticed the incision is nowhere near as big as I expected, good news, no huge scar! The waterproof dressing underneath is almost see through and approx 3 inches at a guess would guess, maybe a little bigger. The arrows on the picture are what the surgeon drew on me before the operation, which makes it look a bit silly! I could definitely tell it is more sensitive to motion without the bandaging, I may put back on for support when I get up later. There is still no real noticeable swelling either and still no bruising at all.
I stayed layed down with arm up until lunch time and from about 10am the most amazing thing happened, no pain in my arm! I can move it a little and put it to rest with no pain for the first time in many months! I was so pleased to be seeing such good progress and I didn’t take any oramorph during the day all, just a couple of ibuprofen.
I called work in the afternoon to update the boss on how I was going, she was so pleased and really positive about the whole thing which was lovely. I also discussed with my partner about the length of time between arm operations, the surgeon had said at least 4 months but we decided between us the ideal time would be early may (about 7 weeks after the first). I will have to work hard on recovering fast for this to be remotely viable and convince the surgeon to do it, I felt this gave me some good motivation.
Mum visited at lunch and was amazed how much motion I had in it and how small the scar will be and no bruising at all. I was beginning to think I was having a very rapid recovery and felt very grateful for it. After lunch I went back to bed and almost dozed but not quite! I’ve still had no proper sleep since the operation.
I had to take a lot of constipation meds today as I’d not been since Saturday morning before the op, it is still an ongoing problem with the morphine! Eventually the motions started at tea time after taking way more meds than I should have needed to to get going! I ended up sitting on the toilet many hours today which sent my foot numb and had an evil nerve like pain in my right foot all evening, stupid body!
I had a bath in the evening and carefully washed around the waterproof dressing to try and get rid of all the yellow dye on my arm and hands. I noticed numbness around elbow and incision area that I didn’t know about before as it was covered by the big bandage. I don’t know if it was caused by the rubbing or not but by 10pm pain and severe twitching had returned to my hand and the pain was as bad as it had been again (8/10). My right arm was also very painful so ended up taking a dose of oramorph which calmed things down some.
I went to bed at 10.30pm feeling gutted that such a good day had ended so badly, I think I realised at this point how much of a bumpy ride recovery was going to be. Overall through the day I had been trying to make my hand into a fist regularly and move my arm about a little more, not until the point it hurt though, just trying to remove stiffness. It is definitely easier to make my hand into a fist and better range of motion today.
Hi Andrew. I have quite recently developed bilateral subluxing ulnar nerves as well. It seems to have a subluxing ulnar nerve is quite unusual, let alone bilateral. Would you be able to tell me how you are going now and also did you end up having ulnar nerve transposition surgery on both arms. I have been advised by surgeons that I will need this on both my arms also; my left sooner than my right. Any information you could give me would be greatly appreciated. Also how long was it before you were using your arm and hand post surgery? Many thanks Martynne.
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeleteI've now had surgery on both arms, yes. My left arm (the first operation) was a huge success and is almost as good as new. My right was great at first until I had a fall and landed on my elbow at the site of the surgery! It's been a problem since then and I've had a second surgery on it and it's still not right. That's not to say though that the original surgery didn't work... it did! Just be careful not to fall on your elbows afterwards!
I was using my hand quite quickly after surgery, I was encouraged to use it as much as I could. I'd say within a couple of weeks I was back to using my hand almost normally, just not picking up heavy things etc.