The thread for flipping shits (and tables)

Yesterday I had my post-surgical consult, which gave me what’s probably the final prognosis on my wrist. (Knee remains a mystery which will likely be MRId to detect tendon or ligament damage in 4-6 weeks.) Fair warning, pictures of my bones behind the cut:

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SpoilerSo to start off with, here’s the initial injury:



For the uninitiated, my wrist isn’t actually broken here: the radius and ulna both snapped just behind the knob where they connect to the carpals, and then relocated themselves on top of their missing tips. Not pictured, the 4 separate pieces of my radius knob (I’m sure there’s a name for it).

Surgery set everything back to an approximation of where it should be, although some of the fragments were apparently too small to be bolted in and are just held in place with tension. Here’s my new and improved cyborg arm:



Improved over the break, anyway. Not a patch on the original, but before I get into that, let me let you appreciate that indistinguishable mass up near the wrist:



All screws! Daaang. If you look closely, you can see the fracture lines on the radius where the bits don’t quite fit together anymore, but most of the breaks are covered by the plate and screws. Ulna lookin’ good though, I can’t even tell where it broke. A+ splinting.

The upshot of this is I am now guaranteed to get arthritis in the wrist. I’m not even being melodramatic for once, that’s a direct quote from my orthopedic surgeon. Pretty lame. I’m also going to lose vertical mobility – anywhere from 20 to 30 degrees in each direction – so it’s a good thing that’s not my waving-effetely hand.

The real bummer though is that even though the most serious injury is now as-good-as-it-can-be and put in its final cast, I still might be as much as three months away from going back to work. My elbow and knee on the right side are still broken and have limited function, even though it seems like they’re fine (until I move them wrongly) since they’re in uncastable places. Unless I can somehow get light clerical work or a chair up at customer service, there’s not much I’m fit for. Which is extremely frustrating, for a host of obvious reasons. We’ll see once the medical release is finalized and I meet with my manager.

uuugh