Splint

So back in January (or was it February), anyways, during the snow storm, I was clumsy and slipped and fell. I guess you could say I landed incorrectly by landing on my left hand, mostly on the thumb. Initially, there was pain and bruising, but the bruises went away after a few days of ice. I also took some Tylenol to counter the pain.

Anyway, 2 months later, my wrist still hurts when I apply pressure to it (i.e. doing push-ups), so I decided to go get it check. Regular hand/wrist usage works fine with no pain (i.e. typing). Having no idea how to go about this (since I didn’t even have a general physician around here – never really needed to see one), I decided to ask around and Vani recommended Dr. Norman Leou. I was able to get an appointment the following day and they took some X-rays, but he wasn’t able to see any type of fracture. He diagnosed it a bit further and suggested that I may have hurt my tendon during the fall. He said they generally heal in about a month and it’s rare that it’s taken over 2 months and still not healed yet. He referred me to Pacific Handworks in Bellevue for physical therapy and suggested I get a splint.

I didn’t really know what a splint nor had any idea what type of physical therapy I was getting. I kept imagining people who hurt their spine and need to relearn how to walk. Anyway, I set up an appointment with Pacific Handiworks and I found out what a splint is:

Anyway, according to the physician, when I fell, I damaged my tendon that controls my thumb and the my body sent a whole bunch of gunk to heal it. However, the body doesn’t really know how to clean out that gunk so whenever I use my thumb, the tendon grinds against those gunk and wounding it again. So now I have a splint that keeps my thumb immobile most of the time. I also have some wrist stretches and tendon gliding exercise I do 4-5x a day. Then there’s the hot and cold water switcheroo where I stick my hand in hot water for 2 mins, then in cold water, and repeat a couple times. Supposedly helps push the gunk back out. Time to recover is expected to be 2-3 weeks and I shouldn’t need to come in anymore. However, if it still hurts after 3 weeks, I should come back in.