7 years post surgery

Brain and nerves
1

Hi,

I thought I'd comment on my experiences with Carpal Tunnel Surgery. I had both hands done privately about 7 years ago at the age of 37.

It's apparently unusual for both hands to be done together but, it minimised my downtime, and got me back to work much quicker. The initial recovery was relatively quick and the 6-8 weeks time guide is about right. You have to realise that just because the hand appears healed it doesn't mean you can carry on as normal though. 3-4 months later I still struggled to hold a garden spade and drive it into the ground or to lift something heavy as it would send an excruciating pain through my hand, it took about 12 months for this pain to have completely passed.

Living with the after effects though, I sometimes wonder whether it was the right thing to do. My hands disturbed my sleep and the systems would have eventually withered away my thumb muscle but, at the time I had strong hands. Now I can easily open a narrow bottle like lemonade but, a wide rimmed jam jar is a lot harder to get a good grip of, and occasionally this is beyond me. It doesn't continue to affect me lifting anything but my hands do tire quickly. I get muscle fatigue very quickly in hands and wrists now even if I'm doing a simple activity like rubbing butter and flour together for a cake, I couldn't do an 8oz mix without a lot of pain in my thumb pad for instance.

My hands now ache in places they never did before, the thumb pad is a given this muscle is worked really hard but, I also have ache's in the tendons across the back of my hands between my fingers, and the bones between the joints in my fingers often ache. It isn't constant and I have to be conscious of my objectives and my time limits when carrying out tasks. If they are too grip heavy I will really pay for it later in the day.

Carpal tunnel surgery releases a very specific pressure but, the hand is a very complex machine and with each action, there is a counteraction, when you cut the tendon strength that joins the two muscle pads of the hand you remove the shared load, each has to now work in a different way to achieve the same result and it creates other issues and pressures. I would love to see the muscles of my hands now compared with someone that has not had surgery as I'm sure they would differ in their make up.

My advice would be to do some additional research prior to having surgery and only use surgery as a last resort. It's a simple surgeons procedure done under local anaesthetic with minimal surgery complications but, for you, it's a different story.

You have to live with the ongoing niggles created by the release, and accept that it's a trade off between the loss of sensation, numbness and muscle wastage against the aches and pains of the lack of hand strength created by the loss of the ligament support.

There are days when I think I made the wrong decision and others when I'm not even conscious of hand problems. You'll often find me massaging my thumb pads in turn with the other thumb to relieve the ache and tightness of everyday simple activities.

I hope this helps others.

 

2

Thanks for sharing Mike. Hank

3

But what would have happened if you didn’t have the carpal tunnel release done?

4

I would have struggled to sleep at night as my hands would be numb a lot of the time when I was lying down. They would have got progressively worse and cramped, and the muscle pad on the thumb would have eventually withered and become hollow. I see a lot of old people with this issue that have blamed it on old age rather than Carpal Tunnel, a very good friend of mine has to rub his hands nettles just so he can bend them. Imagine choosing to do that voluntarily.

Bizarrely if I roll over when sleeping onto an arm now my thumb first and middle finger are fine but the fourth finger and little finger have zero sensation, its like they have been removed and when I touch them to my thumb only my thumb feels them. Proper dead, its very weird.

During lockdown I chose to build a pizza oven in the back garden, it took 4 weeks and it has been very challenging for my hands, they have ached so much they would shake uncontrollably. There is no right answer and I think the surgery is barbaric and that probably in 20 years time it will no longer be performed. I hope someone will have found a better solution to alleviate the issue, a sleeve like a stent for the nerve or something more cultured, because surgery should improve outcomes and this just gives you a different set of problems.

5

Thanks for your answer!
I had the carpal tunnel surgery done in 2014, and both my surgeon plus another doctor I double checked with said if someone is in the need for a carpal tunnel surgery and it’s never done for some reason, then the hand will become paralyzed in the end, that there’s no other possible outcome.

But I would like to add two things, Mike: first, I read somewhere (don’t remember what article now), that there is some surgeon who works with isolation material during the surgery. Some kind of fat-like material to cover and protect the nerve from further damage. Second, after I had my surgery done my hand was covered in hand plastic for 14 days and when uncovered it didn’t do what my brain told it to do, so my surgeon took a note “half paralyzed”. But I started to use it more and more and for greater strength bought Handmaster Plus - a smart way to exercise both sides of the hand. At doczac online. Try it!
Now I’m in a position where I might have to do carpal tunnel surgery again, on the same hand, after overworked it. Cramps in my thumb muscle and above all, a feeling of fever in my hand.
But at the first rime I suffered from Carpal tunnel syndrome, they asked what the main symptoms I had were, tingling, numbness or pain? Neither, I responded - the 90% worst symptom was it felt like the hand was in a freezer.
But I never read or hear anyone saying that.
It’s a temperature problem again for me, this time heat.
/Ken