No Pain - No Gain

Now that my arm is lying flat once again the doctor proceeds with the local freezing procedure and for once I wished I were in the dentist's chair...YEEEEOUCH!!!!! He didn't freeze a little at a time like my lovely dentist does...oh no...he just rams that needle in up to it's hilt and pours in the fire!!!!!

Well.. that's what it felt like...man was that a rough ride. He did it twice - each time from a different angle - and when the hurtin' was all over the nurse peered down at me, smiled and said, "Well, now the worst is over."

And it was... from then on I didn't feel a thing at the surgery site - my fingers and thumb weren't frozen at all. They left the surgery room and I laid there waiting for all the freezing to take effect and wondered if [as sometimes happens in the dentist chair] I'd be asking for more because I could feel the pain.

When he returned to me, the doctor was wearing binocular-type eye pieces and I commented that he looked like a jeweller. He said that he would be looking at something precious and we both had a laugh.

He sat on the lower side of my arm, a resident general surgeon sat opposite him and a resident plastic surgeon looked on forming what I call an operating triangle. My doctor described each step, what he saw and why he was doing what he was doing. The resident general surgeon assisted and made very few comments. I felt like an outsider listening in on a conversation although the doctor did make the offer to me to watch if I desired. I declined the offer. I have such a vivid imagination that if I did see the procedure, I'd remember it and perhaps psychologically influence the post-op main level...no thanks.


I could feel tugging and pulling but, thankfully, no pain at all. Approximately 30 minutes later I left the surgery room with my hand bandaged in a soft layer of cotton, wrapped further in a tensor bandage with the clips taped down and with instructions to keep the hand above my heart level for 5 days to minimize the pain. I wasn't given any medication but was told to take Tylenol extra strength alternately with Advil.

We parted as if we'd just had a nice chat and I walked down the hallway to see Bernard coming toward me. We walked to the van and I noticed I was shaking a little so I suggested we go to Tim Horton's for a hot chocolate. It did the trick and we continued on with our day.

For the next 5 days I kept my arm up and found that the pain was never terrible as long as I took my painkillers on a regular basis. Looking back I would have taken them steadily for 5 days instead of the 2-3 days I did.

Ok...now to see it it did any good...

They're Off!

The bandages came off on the 5th day - but not the one covering my incision. I decided to leave that one one for a couple more days. It is off now and ... well ... it's scary.

The incision is nice and straight and purple and shiny. It's purple because that's the color of the marker the doctor used to mark his cutting line. It's shiny because he coated the incision with clear glue. All my stitches are internal.

So - this is how it happened.

At 10:10AM, Dec 3rd, I laid down on the padded table in a small operating room in the Minor Surgery department of the Foothills hospital and extended my left arm onto a small support. The doctor cleaned my hand and had me touch my thumb to my little finger to mark the line he would cut.

Next he cleaned my forearm front and back as well as the back of my hand before draping my arm with a green cloth. The nurse clamped a cuff on my upper arm a few inches away from my elbow.

The doctor had me raise my forearm so it stood straight up and then he wound a pretty blue shiny piece of rubbery material around my fingers asking me to cross my thumb over my palm when he'd reached the crook of my thumb. He continued wrapping until he got down to the cuff explaining that he needed to drain the blood from my hand so he would be able to see the median nerve clearly. The nurse pressurized the cuff , off came the blue rubber material and I laid my arm down once more.

I'm glad I wasn't told of the next part of the procedure or I wouldn't have been nearly as relaxed as I was - which wasn't relaxed very much as you can well imagine.

To be continued...

CTR

CTR stands for 'Choose the Right' and these initials are on a silver ring I wear on my right hand.

CTR also stands for 'Carpal Tunnel Release" which is the surgery I had on my left hand Dec 3rd.

Gotta go - can't type more than that today but I will attempt to tell you all the gory details tomorrow - I get to take the bandages off, then - the fifth day...