With hindsight, probably the last thing you should do if your hand goes through a pane of glass, is pull it back out at speed.This is about what happens if you do.
Leeds General Infirmary’s ‘Hand Unit’ refer to my kind of injury as a ‘Full House’, where every nerve, artery and tendon in the wrist of my right hand was severed in an accident at home. That was February 2011.
The hand was held in place by the fact that the bones were unharmed. If you turn your wrist over and look at the soft underside where you might take your pulse; all that was cut through and exposed.
Many people have described such a thing as being their worst nightmare, and it might be, but a nightmare is over once you wake up. This is the story of how one fairly regular bloke experienced the reality and what happened next.
I'm putting this together because in the early days I really needed someone to show me what to expect much further down the line. I couldn't find anything that did; the medical staff could tell me what it might be like but that didn't work for me, I needed to see evidence, and even YouTube for once was found to be lacking on the subject.
What follows is intended to cover my journey of recovery and rehabilitation, simply because if something like this has happened to you, you'll need all the help you can find.
My Physiotherapist and Occupational Therapist and indeed all the team at Hand Unit at Leeds General Infirmary have been truly fantastic. I questioned some of the treatment in the early days, only because I couldn't see (but more accurately; couldn't believe) that there was any way of getting much back given the extent of the damage. My 'take' was that these lovely people are getting me to do things (which hurt like hell) that just won't make much difference.
I don't want you to make some of the early (and incorrect) assumptions that I did. This is the picture 2 years or so after the accident. They said that by this time my recovery would be about as good as it was going to get.
All is not as bad as it initially seems.
I hope some of what follows is of help.
