Investigate Our Jumbo Floating Rod

Imagine a metal strap about 2" wide tightened around your wrist. This is what it feels like inside my wrist. After working the first few weeks to loosen my fingers, now working to flex the wrist is added to the therapy. To flex the wrist up and down, or side to side, is to push against the strap and try to stretch it. Gain is not made by stopping when you feel the pressure of the strap. It only begins there, as it would if the strap were indeed made of metal.

Imagine that the metal strap is upholstered with the tiny thorns from wild blackberry brambles. This is what the skin around my wrist feels like, as if it were scratched by thorns, or slightly burned. Anything touching or brushing against the jangled nerve endings of this skin feels like sandpaper on sunburn. This effect has eased up considerably during the seven weeks since my surgery, but lingers in the vicinity of the scar.

The scar, I'm told, must be massaged as much as possible throughout the day. You can't massage it too much. The purpose of massage is to reduce the formation of scar tissue, and to unstick the scar tissue from the ligaments near it, which tend to become glued to it. This, along with the tightness, the shrinkage of the ligaments, is what restricts the motion of the wrist. If you look at the inside of your wrist--go ahead, flex your hand a bit--you can see a couple of the nine ligaments that run from the elbow to the hand. My 2.25" scar runs vertically right along these ligaments. In my uninjured wrist, the ligaments are very prominent, but in the swollen wrist I can't see them at all. Even the scar itself barely moves when I try to flex the wrist, or when I massage the area with my thumb.

My physical terrorist uses a rubber-tipped tool to massage my scar, and then she stretches it vertically with her fingers. This seems to tear open the outermost layer of the scar, making it feel more raw than it does already. I assume she has her reasons. I haven't asked. I try to avoid being mentally present during that portion of my therapy. She's working that process primarily on the end of the scar nearest the heel of my hand, where the skin is tightest and the scar closest to the ligaments. I see that the scar now seems less deep there than at the other end, where it's quite a ditch. I'm sure she's not motivated by aesthetics, but I can't imagine that this is reducing the scar tissue below the surface, just making more on the outside.