Rob’s hands

Rob’s been having some trouble at the winery with his hands. He’d been losing sensation in his fingertips, dropping things and dealing with general weakness. We were pretty sure it was carpal tunnel syndrome, so he was trying to put off going to the doctor until after harvest.  A persistant tingling in two of his fingers added to everything else finally sent him in yesterday.

The doctor, a hand specialist, confirmed that it was carpal tunnel.  But then he told Rob that the persistant tingling was a sign of nerves dying.  He didn’t want to delay treatment, at all. So sometime next week, Rob is going in for surgery.  He won’t be able to lift anything at all for two weeks with that hand. And then be on very light duty with it for months.

I’ll keep you posted.

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19 thoughts on “Rob’s hands”

  1. David W. Goldman

    Best wishes for a quick recovery! (IIRC, this sort of surgery, done this early in the course of the syndrome, usually works out very, very well.)

  2. Not fun. Best wishes. The operation tends to work out very well, I believe. My Mum (the embroiderer and artist) suffered from carpal tunnel, had the operation and it was 100% successful. Here’s hoping its just as good for Rob.

  3. My dad had this surgery on both hands over the course of two years and it worked out great. If an old man can heal so quickly I’m sure your husband will bounce back even faster.

  4. Arggggh. My best wishes to Rob and to you.

    I have a friend, a semi-professional musician, who went through this surgery in his early 30s, and while it was a rough six months of recovery, he WAS, in fact, “able to play the piano after all this.”

  5. Good luck to Rob! My husband has had a total of three spine surgeries, one for an infected disk, one for stenosis from vertebrae rubbing together, and one from a bone spur on his spine. The second two problems cause nerve damage. Any persistent numbness in the extremities should be checked out immediately! My husband put off going to the doctor (I think this trait must be linked to the Y chromosome or something) and he’s sorry now. It sounds like your husband’s problem is less extreme; here’s to a speedy recovery.

  6. Hi, just wanted to make sure you were confident in your doctor. I was misdiagnosed with carpel having exactly the same symptoms. Luckily I don’t trust doctors so I went for a second opinion with a nerve specialist before they cut me open. It turns out what I had was a combination of cubital tunnel and a neck recurve problem, not carpel. Good luck!

  7. Holy crap, that’s horrible! Is it possible to summon up a posse of doctors and lawyers to argue that it’s not a preexisting condition? (Expensive, I know, but some lawyers will do this for a cut of the damages.)

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