I broke my trapezium, obviously that’s not the same injury but it’s a similarly-sized carpal bone that’s just as rare to break.
It was kind of a high-energy burst fracture that the consultant said he’d never seen before. When I asked him to point it out on the x-ray he said “well, this is where it
should be”
As I hadn’t “presented” it until a month after it had been done the only course of action was to leave it for four months and see how it developed. The options after that were
-just leave it as it is if I was managing OK.
-whip the whole remains of the bone out (he said he did this for patients on a weekly basis as it’s a fix for osteoarthritis of the thumb) the downside being that it would lead to a tangible and permanent loss of (what climbers call) pinch-grip strength.
-Pioneering surgery to remove part of the bone remnant and refashion the rest into a working surrogate. As you can imagine this was his preferred option and he was probably planning the journal article and presentation in his head as he was suggesting it
.
I was deeply sceptical that the first option would happen as at that point I could barely pinch a glass of water and the pain was terrible but over the course of the four months the raw surfaces of the bone healed and my hand just adapted to the new configuration. It looks a bit wonky (the thumb kind of “lives” in front of my palm now- it’s permanently in a narrow hand jam position) but I very rarely have pain from it, I didn’t need an operation and I can do everything I used to, including climbing. I’m sure if you did measurements on me my left hand would be weaker than the right but, I mean, Tommy Caldwell’s got a missing finger.
So if the option to wait and see is there, take it and hopefully you’ll have an outcome like mine.