After my last hand update I’ve done more things attempting to fix the DeQuervian thing. The pills and ice and brace first offered were not much help. I ended up with a referral to Dr Todd Guyette at Proliance Hand in Bellevue. Dr Guyette is a pretty rad dude, and a bit hunky. He seems more about taking care of his patients then having the most awesome granite and fancy lobby in the world. Being frugal and stuff this impresses me. Plus he is down right personable and entertaining to talk to.
At my first visit while Dr Guyette was checking out my hand he nonchalantly asks me how old my kids are, I answer, then say ” um how do you know I have kids?” he tells me the injury is most likely from how I hold kids and pick them up. He demonstrates his guess of how I hold kids and says that is bad for thumbs. Go figure the cause is not my phone but my kids.
Dr Guyette proceeded to spray my hand with freeze spray, inject me withy a local pain reliever, then stuck a big needle in my head and made a large bump caused by the steroids he pumped into my hand. He says “give that a month. Pain should decrees over time”. I did improve for about a week then it got worse, and continued to worsen to the point my thumb was actually getting stuck as the tendons would stick in the tunnel. sticking was an odd feeling.
I went back about 3 weeks ago to the Issaquah to have surgery but we scheduled wrong and had to move to today. No shot between surgery and now, take motrin like candy was my only real option, which was not fun, but oh well.
Surgery
I arrived at the Proliance Kirkland office at 7:40 and was in a gown in prep around 8:00. They gave me a nice gown to wear, some shots of local pain reliever, an IV with some antibiotics then off we went to surgery. It took about twice as long as the doctor was thinking it would take due to my design redundancy. Even twice as long I was back out in recovery and out the door headed off to the next job by 9:15.
I’m in a splint not to be removed for the next week. I don’t want to it to stink too badly so I guess no running untill the thing comes off next week. Super sad face, i was dressed and planed to run afterwards thinking I could take the splint off and on and clean it. Oh well I guess I’ll take a week off. They gave me the option of local or knocked out for the surgery; I went with local because the surgery was quick and local meant I could drive myself.
I’m writing this at work and the local is starting to wear off. Thumb, and top two fingers feel like they are asleep times about 50, and there is a bit of some pain coming through where the incision was. Might be time to take some of those pills from Dublin and relax in the corner.
Designed Differently – With redundancy
From what the doctor says, and pictures show, most people have one tunnel and two tendons controlling the thumbs up and down and side to side motion. Turns out I’m built a bit differently with 8 extra tendons and an extra tunnel. Which is part of why my thumb stopped working.
This is not the first time I’ve had an operation and been told I’m nor normal. Many Many moons ago I had the drainage ducts in my eyes closed due to eye redness that never went away caused by marginally functional tear ducts exacerbated by looking at computer screens all day long. Most people have 4 drainage ducts near the middle of their eyes. One on the top and one of the bottom of each eye. I’m Built with two on top and two on the bottom of each eye.
The theme here seems to be I’m built with extra redundancy ? Which is fine with me because I love having extras and Backups. I’m always telling Jer Jer that one is none and Two is one.
