When I was 13 years old, I was riding home from school on my bike.  I had a book in my right hand because I didn’t have a backpack.  Then I hit a patch of gravel.  Couldn’t stop the front wheel of the bike from jack-knifing and down I went, breaking my fall with my left hand.

Of course, that fall resulted in a multiple fracture.  I’d broken three bones in my wrist and hand.  The bone in your hand that goes to your thumb, one of the larger bones in your arm (not sure if it was the ulna or the radius) and one of the many little bones in the wrist itself.  Doc said I must have hyper-extended it.

All these years later, I’ve had problems with it.  My thumb especially.  I can’t straighten it fully like I can with my other thumb.  And it aches so much during cold weather.

Last month, my wrist really started hurting.  I thought huh, weird.  Maybe I’d strained it somehow, but it wouldn’t go away.  When I was wrapping Christmas gifts, it really started to hurt, and one day when I was mopping with my twist-head mop, I thought I was going to die.  That’s when I knew I should get a wrist brace.  So my hubby got me one and it felt wonderful, but the pain wasn’t going away.

To make a long story short (too late) I made an appt. with an orthopedic surgeon.  Saw him today and got some x-rays done.  Good news is, there is nothing wrong with my bones.  Bad news is, thus begins the hypothesizing on what it could be.

I’d done some research online and latched onto something called TFCC, where the “triangle” of ligaments in your wrist gets a tear, making for pain along the outside of your wrist, the ulnar side, the side with your little fingers.  It hurts when you rotate your wrist, even for mundane things like turning a doorknob or starting a car.  And forget about holding that gallon of milk.  Well, my pain wasn’t exactly like that.  The sharp pains came every now and then, but mostly, it just ached, up the ulnar side of my arm and along my little and ring finger of my left hand.

Doctor spent about 20 minutes with me doing different wrist tests, and he asked if it was tender to the touch.  I told him yeah, but deep down, like it was underneath something.  So he dug on down in there, and yup, he found it!  He asked if my hand/arm had ever gotten numb.  I told him not all the time, but it sometimes has that weird, dull sensation after you hit your funny bone when it aches.

Then, he bent my arm and did a few more tests, then informed me he thinks it might be my ulnar nerve.  You see, when he bent my wrist, he hit my ulnar nerve at my elbow (where you hit your funny bone) and I didn’t have a reaction.  No reflex.  Well, hardly one.  I barely felt pins and needles in my pinky.  So, he thinks I have a pinched or compressed nerve in there.  Which makes sense, since it’s not sharp pain, but more like a dull ache that buzzes.

So, next Monday, I’m going to a nerve specialist to see where the problem with this nerve is.  If it’s in the elbow itself, my ortho. surgeon can take care of it.  If it’s compressed in the wrist, I’ll have to see a hand surgeon.  Seems to me it would be weird to be in the elbow if my wrist is what’s hurting, but I’m not a doctor, and I have no idea how nerves work.

Anyway, they’re going to stick electrodes in me and send pulses into my nerves to see if the problem is elbow or wrist.  He said it’s not pleasant.  But I have every confidence I’ll live through it.  It cannot possibly be as bad as the time I had to rotate my broken wrist on the x-ray table to be perpendicular to the table.  Despite having 5 children and enduring labor pains and a broken ankle, tailbone, and big toe, I still believe that one wrist x-ray with that radiologist torturer was the most painful event in my life.  I was screaming in there, I remember that much.

However I do believe it’s in my wrist.  Things just don’t feel “right” in there to me, and even the doc was feeling my tendons and such for a few minutes with his furrowed brow.

So for now, I’ve got to wait another week and keep wearing my brace when it gets to be too much to bear.  Like right now, for instance, writing on my laptop with my arm resting on the table, further compressing that nerve.  UGH.

Well, that’s the saga.  No writing this week at all.  Might not be for a while to come.  We shall see…  I just hope it’s not really messed up in there.  Don’t want any surgery.  Especially with a nerve.  Scary stuff!  I’ll keep y’all updated.  In the meantime, I’ve got another week to get through.  Joy of joys.  :-/

~~Becka