I know what you're thinking: "Huh? De Quer.... what?" That's what I thought when I was diagnosed with it!
Basically, De Quervain's Tenosynovitis is when the tendons that runs from your thumb down your wrist gets swollen. There is a sheath that covers those tendons. When the tendon gets swollen, it doesn't have anywhere to go since that sheath is there, therefore causing pain.
The cause of De Quervain's is overuse of the wrist and thumb. I had a baby that I was constantly holding and was nursing him. The extra strain of holding a baby and the nursing position I was using was causing my tendons to swell.
For me, it all started with a bit of pain in my wrist. It would hurt more if I moved my thumb. As time went on, the pain gradually got more severe and was worse when I moved my hand at all. It got to the point where I tried everything I could to not move my wrist. That's kind of hard to do when it is your dominant hand that is hurting, and you have a baby. When I would try to hold things, my grip wasn't very strong. When I did have to move my wrist, it's almost like it would pop, or get stuck and then keep moving. It was so painful to try to pick up my baby to hold him and nurse him. Eventually I wasn't even able to sleep at night because of the pain. If I moved in my sleep, the pain would wake me up.
That was the point when I knew I needed to figure out what was going on. I had tried icing my wrist, taking anti-inflammatory medications, going to different chiropractors and doing physical therapy. I went to an InstaCare one night because of the pain. That is when a doctor told me about De Quervain's. He suggested that I wear a brace on my wrist for several weeks to see if that would help. If the pain didn't improve then I would need to go see and orthopedic physician.
You can see the brace I was using in the picture above. New Year's Eve isn't very fun when you can't use your hand!
Well, the brace didn't work. I made an appointment with a great doctor who specialized in hand and wrist injuries. We tried doing a cortisone shot in my wrist to see if that would help. I did get relief from the pain, but only for about 2-3 days. Cortisone shots are supposed to last quite a bit longer.
When the shot didn't work, the last resort was surgery. I am SO glad I got the surgery done! What they did was they knocked me out (best nap I had had in a while!), made a little slit in the side of my wrist where the tendons run down from my thumb, and cut the sheath that covered them. That made it so the tendons didn't have anymore pressure on them from the sheath. They had more room to move. More room to move = no more pain!
I had my right wrist done in April of 2017. You can tell I am pretty nervous in the picture below. If you know me, I don't do well with needles. Or blood. Or basically anything in a hospital. I was terrified!
Not too long after, my left wrist started doing the same thing. I had overused my left hand since I hadn't been able to use my right hand with the pain. So, I went in for surgery number two in August of 2017. As you can tell, I was ready to rock the second surgery. I already knew how everything went and was excited for an awesome nap!
I hadn't experienced any bruising after the surgery on my right hand, but I sure did on my left one!
If you look on the side of my wrist in that picture, you'll see a little slit. That is how they went in and took care of the sheath. I will tell you that 5 years later, I don't see any scars on either of my wrists.
Well folks, that is how my experience with De Quervain's went. I am grateful that I had the surgery done on both of my wrists! I haven't had an wrist/thumb/hand issues since!
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