Monday, December 02, 2019

I Still Have Two Arms

The procedure went fine, but my keyboarding time is still pretty low, so there will be a couple of picture days this week.

If you're wondering how PRP therapy works, here's a quick overview. A surprisingly large amount of blood is withdrawn from your arm, then its spun down until the platelets are concentrated. A local anesthetic (via injection) will be applied to your injured area, then the platelets will be injected into the injury site.

The cool part is that you can watch it on the ultrasound, so I was able to see both the damaged parts of the tendon and the needle as it headed for the area. Super cool.

From start to finish, it only took slightly more than an hour. 

Also, there was no pain during the procedure, other than a tiny bit of pain when they injected the local anesthetic.

That blissful period without pain lasted about thirty minutes after the completion of the procedure. Then it began to spike, and fairly quickly. It felt like I had a big heart in my arm, and it had a steady beat.

I did wind up taking two Vicodin over the course of the rest of the day (my doctor demanded it), but I didn't take any after that. Extra Strength Tylenol worked well enough, along with a little gritting of teeth.

Six days after the procedure, my arm definitely still hurts, but my range of motion is getting noticeably better each day.

I start doing a set of rehab exercises after two weeks, then an additional set at four. Full effect takes up to twelve weeks. In the meantime, I'm supposed to use it as normally as possible, excluding lifting anything that weighs more than a few pounds.

I'll keep you posted. I'm sure plenty of you have various busted bits, so this might be useful.

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