It all started in the gym. My workout of the day was heavy deadlifts. I got a bit lax in my form, and I felt something like two rubber bands snapping in my right arm. It actually didn't hurt all that badly, but the way my biceps bunched up toward my shoulder looked ominous. MRI confirmed a total rupture of my right distal biceps tendon.
I considered my options and decided to try for surgery to repair the tendon. I hadn't lost too much function, but I thought if I had a good chance to recover my full strength then I should take it. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
According to my orthopedic surgeon when they opened up my arm they discovered that my biceps tendon was "shredded." There wasn't enough left of it to hold sutures. So the original injury could not be repaired. But when I woke up from the surgery I found that I'd gotten a special bonus injury while I was under: My right hand is now partially paralyzed.
It seems that while they were rooting around in my arm trying to repair that tendon a nerve got a bit stretched: the posterior interosseous nerve to be precise. As a result when I awoke I was unable to supinate my right wrist and the muscles that extend my metacarpal/phalangeal (MCP) joints were dead. The MCP joints are at the base of each finger and thumb where they meet the hand, so the result is that I'm unable to extend the fingers of my right hand.
That was about 8 weeks ago. My surgeon tells me that there is no cure, per se, for my condition. Like most nerve injuries it will either get better on its own or it won't. A neurologist tells me that there's no way to predict how much function I'll recover, but that the next 6 months or so will tell the story.
There has been some progress. I can supinate my wrist about halfway now. Pronation is unaffected as is flexion of the wrist. Wrist extension shows a strong radial deviation due to loss of enervation in the ulnar wrist extensors. I have greatly reduced grip strength in my right hand - about 50% of what it was before the surgery. There has been very little recovery in my fingers: I have perhaps 2-3 mm of extension in my index finger, none in the rest.
I've spent the past six weeks learning to type with my left hand only, using a special keyboard layout designed for that purpose. I'm a technical writer by trade: I type for a living.
And of course I still have all the problems you'd expect from the loss of my right biceps.
So my training has a bit more adventure to it now. I'm in the process of recovering whatever function I can in my right hand, recovering as much strength as I can in my arm, and now trying to get back into the gym for the rest off my body. This journal is my record of that work. I'm living proof that surgery can change your whole life.
