Ferret's slowing down.

[offroadfx4_imp]

Went to the ortho hand specialist today. Basically I have CMC OA which is:

Thumb carpometacarpal (CMC) joint osteoarthritis (OA) is the second most common form of hand OA, affecting between 20% and 30% of the general population.

I did get x-rays showing areas of concern.

3 Treatments (outside of physical therapy...I'll discuss later).

1. voltaire arthritis gel like ferret got, anti-inflammatory....2-4 grams 4 times/day
2. steroid shots of cortisone, that can only be repeated a couple of times
3. surgery...they basically remove a bone and tie two bones together

1. I did get the voltaire gel....you even get a little plastic ruler to measure out a 2 gram dose
2. I passed on the steroid shot for now....they do use ultra sound to guide the needle, but sounded like no fun
3. surgery, while sounding drastic was promoted as a common cure. The physical therapist said she had been doing research on the success of this type of surgery called a CMC Tightrope. She said she has seen and provided physical therapy to over 50 of these this year. She couldn't say 100% recovery to no loss of motion or strength but said she thought it was minimal loss. She did say the ability to "pinch" is is reduced.

Official Diagnosis



Surgery Recommended:



Surgery with bone removed and "buttons" on both sided of the bones....the OT said it was like a really heavy fishing line.



Physical Therapy had a couple of unique treatments.

1. First was moving the thumb up and down, in and out while gripping a baseball with a resistance band wrapped around your hand.
2. They had me dip my hand in "hot wax" and it was hot, 4 times...then wrapped my hands in plastic to hold the warm moisture in as long as possible.
3. They made me some custom braces that I'm suppose to wear at night and other times if i can.

Here is the hot wax machine, she said you can catch them on sale at bed bath and beyond about Christmas time for $25. Felt really weird, made me wonder if I have been missing this in other parts of my 43 yr marriage LoL.



Here are the braces....pretty cool they can heat this stuff up and mold it to your individual body parts. They are pretty comfortable. I can see wearing them at night without any problems.







The most important thing is the doctor did say I could continue to ride motorcycles!