Doctor my wrist hurts

Don't know how the hell the pain started masquerading as pronator quadratus because it's definitely the TFC, confirmed by MRI.


I hope to get an appointment with the hand surgeon this week. From the medical literature it seems that the periphery of the TFC on the ulnar side is slightly vascular and tears there might heal following immobilisation. The bulk of it is avascular and so tears won't heal. From the MRI it's not clear quite exactly where the "full thickness tear" might be.

Now what?

I could ask the surgeon to fill my wrists with cortisone and hope that masks the pain for long enough for me to open the major new line I am working on. After that I deal with the consequences. Presumably the consequences could be significant by then, given that at this point already I can no longer do stuff like eat soup with a spoon!

Alternatively I get surgical repair with several months' immobilisation and rehab. In this case I really don't believe that it would be possible for me ever to get back to climbing the standard I wish to. Perhaps I am overly pessimistic but I don't see many examples that suggest that 50 year olds recover from wrist surgery and get back to climbing grade 33. When I combine the wrist with the OA in the fingers, which is fairly bad, it seems to me like the clock is ticking...

Is climbing some arbitrarily defined grade and certain routes really important? That's hard to say. From my current perspective the answer is "yes". That might be an odd way of looking at climbing, but so far I have been unable to make the mental adjustment required to look at it any other way.

Perhaps I need some sessions with a psychologist to gain a little perspective rather than a trip to the hand surgeon...