Hi everyone! Grace and I would like to share with you an aspect of her recovery that we haven’t posted about before: her right hand. As we know, Grace’s left hand was affected by the stroke, so that she has no sensation in it and has been working through therapy to learn to use it without the sense of touch. Since her right hand has been her only usable hand throughout the past seven months or so, this has led to the development of some injuries in her right hand and arm, presumably from overuse. There is also a possibility that some of her current pain is a result of trauma from the initial impact–at the time of the accident, Grace was carrying her violin case in her right hand. Some muscles or ligaments may have been damaged, but given Grace’s critical condition at the time and no external warning signs, the right hand was not a super high priority.

Around the beginning of March, Grace started experiencing pain around her right thumb and wrist. Her occupational therapist in Riverside diagnosed her condition as De Quervain’s tenosynovitis, which is swelling of the thumb tendons located in the wrist. She gave Grace a splint to wear, which is designed to immobilize the tendon to allow it to rest. When the first splint didn’t help, she gave Grace a second kind; but after 10 weeks that area still hurt.

When we made it up to San Jose, we explained our situation to a sports medicine doctor, who gave Grace a cortisone injection to help relieve the pain and inflammation, as well as a third kind of splint to try. As Grace and I started occupational therapy in San Jose, our new therapist spotted that it was not just Grace’s thumb tendons that were swollen, but that the swelling went all the way up to her elbow tendons. She subsequently tried ultrasound therapy on Grace’s right arm and wrist, and gave us a fourth kind of splint, but after four weeks, the pain still hadn’t gone away.

So today, Grace and I saw a hand surgeon for a consultation to see if she had any new information or advice. She explained that sometimes it takes multiple cortisone shots before we can see any effect. (As a brief aside, the normal progression to heal from De Quervain’s is splinting, then cortisone shots, then a surgery that creates space around the thumb tendons, allowing them to heal more quickly.) So our choice was to try another cortisone shot (which, Grace tells me, really hurts) and see if more time will help her tendons heal, or to go ahead and do the surgery. From the doctor’s perspective, there wasn’t a “better” choice necessarily, since short of surgery no one can guarantee the desired outcome. However, the surgery would mean Grace could not use her right hand at all for at least six weeks, effectively leaving her without the use of either hand. Given this dilemma, we decided to try another cortisone shot, along with a fifth kind of splint, while scheduling a surgery date in September in case this second shot doesn’t work.

Please pray for Grace during this time! She has worked so hard at her therapy and “homework” exercises, in order to get stronger and better, and she has done all of that while trying to “rest” her overused right hand as much as possible. Grace has a very high pain tolerance level, so if she says something hurts, it definitely hurts bad. As always, we are trusting God to guide us step by step, but there are moments when we’re more tired and worn out than at other times. This also reinforces the fact that recovery is not linear–there are ups and downs! But we’ll keep walking step by step with our gracious and merciful Lord, and we can’t thank all of you enough for walking with us! Thanks again so much! 🙂