good thing its my left or i couldnt let you all know how it went. I dont wanna scare nobody....but this is worse than when i had bad kidney stones. I will put pics up when the dressings off. Man im in extreme pain. My hand looks like a balloon. I had a subcutaneous transposition btw.Its still very...very very numb. But the pain is bugging me the most and i cant seem to move my fingers barely at all without extreme pain. The doc called me and said it shouldnt be that bad so now he is worried. hes an intern so i was skeptical...but his intenbtions are good...my hand just burns sooo bad and the pain is a 12 out of 10. Im pretty thin and the cut was 10 inches long. Ill keep you updated on how i heal/complications nd outcome

Jay530,

Sorry to hear about your complications from surgery. I am not a doctor, but I have a few thoughts:

1) It's too late now, but you should always find an experienced surgeon when having major surgery like this. I might let an intern cut my hair once, but I certainly wouldn't allow an intern to cut open my arm. You might consider finding and switching to an experience hand surgeon.

2) A 10" scar is way too long, unless you had some other injury we don't know about. Much of your pain could be from this long wound.

3) Severe pain is common the first few days after surgery, but usually not 12 on a scale of 10. Sounds like something is indeed wrong. You should also be taking some decent narcotics such as codeine for the first few days. Advil alone will not cut it.

Good luck with your recovery, and be sure to stop back and give us an update.

Are you sure your surgeon was an intern and not a fellow or ortho resident under the supervision of an ortho? To be an intern, he would have just graduated from medical school this June. No surgical intern would know how to perform a nerve transposition.

10" is a little long, but the scar will retract quite a bit. Actually, better that it should be long enough to see what's going on in there than too short! You might have had a triceps myopexy if your triceps was snapping over the medial epicondyle.

The pain gets better. Hang in there.

Well hes not actually an intern...but hes only been an ortho for almost a year. I was his very first transposition...and man am i regretting it...im like...thin...pretty thin...so this wound is massive, haha...anyways no they gave me oxycottins and norco for the pain...he is very worried something is wrong but we will only know after this recoverphase (6 weeks) untill he will let me know about another surgery. HE let me know everything and he said i might have just got stuck with a bad dissability. Hes straight up with me now and tells me exactly whats going on...hes worried about more severe nerve damage and multiple compression sites...thats all he said...ohh yea and some rsd or something like that. I have another appt with him in two weeks and will know more. This surgery definitly sucks huge...and to you whoever didnt feel much pain well...congratulations on having an excel doc. I have a very sever case of it though so he said the chances are like 10 to 1 to get better and 50-50 to stop getting worse. I have bad muscle atrophy and clawing of the pinky and ring. All from leaning on my elbow tooooo much...dammmm....Imma very fast typer with my right hand (thank god) OR else i wouldnt be able to tell details. Ill keep you updated. Ohh yea and the 10 inch incision is better he said..it gives him more room to work around all the tender spots...he said the smaller it is the harder it is...and a bigger scar is worth more than not finding out whats up, Only in my case he didnt actually find out whats up.

Jay, you are a LOT braver than I am!!! When it comes to nerves and such, I would never let "me" be his first for this type (or any at that rate) of surgery. Of course he doesn't think the size of the scar is a biggy - its not on his arm!

Like you I had a severe case - numb up to the wrist (including part of the wrist), 1/2 my hand, ring and 1/2 pinkie, and too, both of those fingers had clawed. Wasting, yes, back of my hand, fingers and part of my forearm. I find it funny (not funny truly) that most everyone on here that has complications, the doctors all of a sudden blame it on RSP or bone spurs. I find that very suspect. Keep us posted. OF course if he says he needs to cut you again, you will run as fast as you can AWAY from him. *hug*

The surgery itself irritates the nerve. Give it time to let everything calm down.


The surgery can be excruciating, even in run of the mill transpositions, even in people who go on to make a complete recovery.