Almost 1 Year Later... Warning: Some Photos May Be Graphic!

Since it's getting somewhat close to the one year "anniversary" of my wrist accident, I thought I would dedicate this post to a recap of what I've been through (and still continue to today).

As you probably already know, last September (2011) I had a customer at work knock a pile of lumber on me, severing the scaphoid lunate ligament. That following November, I had my first surgery to repair the ligament with a synthetic one. I went into the surgery looking like this:

After the doctor came in and described the surgery and planned out with me each step, I looked like this:

After surgery, I woke up looking like this:

Surgery was successful. In December I got my first cast. Pretty, huh?:

The cast came with a special window that housed a temporary pin. The pin was to hold up my scaphoid bone while the synthetic ligament healed: 

In January 2012, I developed an infection around the pin. One day, I accidentally bashed my wrist on the car door, pushing the pin in 3/4 of an inch, and causing the infection to become septic. On January 10th, I was admitted to the hospital and had my first surgery to clean out the infection. It ended up taking a second surgery (or third if we're counting) on the 12th before the infection was finally out of my system.

However, during that surgery on the 12th, I bit the intibation tube during general anesthesia. This caused me to suffer flash pulmonary edema during recovery. 

I was in the hospital for the total of one week. After my surgeries, I was very stiff and couldn't open my hand:

  

For the next five days, I worked on healing and getting my hand to work properly. Eventually I was able to straighten my fingers:

After that, I got out of the hospital and started physiotherapy. I went 5 days/week, and was able to return to work.

Then one day in April I was at work, and signed my name on a few forms. Apparently that was too much, because my wrist seized and I had to leave work, rush to my physiotherapist, and get her to manipulate my wrist so that it would move. It took 48 hours before my wrist finally relaxed. I went to my surgeon the following week, where we determined that I had re-ruptured the ligament that he had fixed back in November.

At that point, the scars were finally starting to heal nicely, though the one on the side was quite the eyesore because it had been stitched instead of stapled like the one on the back.

After a very long and painful wait, I finally had my 4th surgery on July 23rd to reconstruct the ligament. This time, instead of a synthetic ligament, I opted to have a metal screw drilled through to hold everything in place. Surgery was successful, although while fighting his way through all the scar tissue, the surgeon did accidentally clip and sever a tendon. He was able to suture it up in surgery, and while it means I might have a slightly longer than expected recovery, he is hopeful that everything should end up normal. Also, he was nice enough to staple both incision sites this time, to clear up the ugly scar.

I had the staples removed last week, and got a new cast put on. A waterproof one this time!

I've got another 3 weeks in this cast, and then if there are no complications, I'll be starting physio again, and hopefully that's the end of all this madness!! Enough is enough already!

So now you're all caught up :)