The surgery was perhaps the easy part. I decided to go with the nerve block in my arm to help with the pain after surgery and they gave me general anesthesia because I absolutely refuse to be awake or have the possibility of waking up during a procedure! The interesting thing about the surgery is that they had given me the impression that the nerve block would wear off within 10-12 hours. This did not happen to be the case. They put me in a sling because they were afraid I might damage my wrist or arm because it had no feeling from the shoulder down. This was indeed a strange sensation. It took closer to 24 hours for the feeling to return and during that time I often forgot that I was unable to use it and at some point I actually recovered partial use and ended up forgetting in the midst of it and slapping myself in the face with my own hand...it was quite laughable and happened twice!! The weekend passed pretty quickly with not a lot of sleep but not much pain since I was pretty good about taking the meds when I needed them and keeping ice on it regularly.
This recovery has not been as easy as I would have expected. I admit, I might have jumped the gun just a bit by returning to work a little earlier than I should have. I only took two days off and when I returned to work the first day, I had the great pleasure of throwing up everything I had eaten and my pain meds. Of course, then I was terrified to even try to put anything back on my stomach including food and pain meds! So, that started a pretty difficult week. I chose to wear the sling while I was at work because I wanted to make sure that customers knew I had had surgery and was unable to lift with that arm. It was a good plan and for the most part kept me from using the wrist too much. I had the stitches removed on the Wednesday after surgery. Then I was down to using steri-strips to keep the incisions closed and healing and wrapping it in an ace bandage to keep from using it too much.
That went pretty well for only a short while. However, that same day, I ended up getting headbutted by an overzealous and friendly old English bulldog directly on my left wrist. Talk about painful! Ouch!!! I ended up having to go back to being on pain meds during the day as well and back to icing because it had begun to swell again. This definitely slowed the healing process a little. And work did not help the wrist too much because I still had to try to do what I could at work and with the extra pain, I have had a difficult couple of weeks.
All of this also kept me out of the gym for the past few weeks. And that has been horribly difficult. The first week I knew I could not hit the gym. Week 2, I had intended to head back to the gym but I was exhausted and still taking pain meds. And work was intense, so I did not make it in at all. I knew I would not be lifting upper body and would likely do either cardio or just lower body, but between not feeling well and a stressful week, I just did not make it to the gym.
Today, however, I made it back to the gym and had a pretty great workout. I got a good leg workout in and it was exhausting but necessary! I am certain I will be feeling it for a few days too! I am not sure when I can include upper body in again, but I will definitely be waiting to hear back from the surgeon with more information about my restrictions and activities and even expectations. I had no idea how much strength I had lost in my lower body since I had not been doing legs lately. Tripp had injured his knee and we had not been doing legs together and I had not had an opportunity to get in by myself and do a leg workout, so it has been awhile. The good thing is that my legs recover quickly and I will be back to my regular weights soon!
So, the wrist is doing well. I still have a couple weeks before I see the surgeon again for another post op check. Hopefully, he will be happy with my progress. I am still trying to take it slowly and carefully, so we'll see.
And my hiatus from running is coming to an end. This week I will be hitting the elliptical a lot and getting some short runs in. It is time to get back to my love/hate relationship with running :)
