How it happened

I fell ice skating in early December and tried to catch myself on my wrists. They both hurt for a week or two, but then got better. It never really swelled or bruised, so I didn't think much of it. Then in January, I played in a slow pitch softball tournament. Our first game was in the morning and it was really cold, and I remember the first time I hit the ball it kinda stung more than usual. Again, it hurt for about a week, but then got better. Then one random weekend laying around the house, sitting up off the couch, my left one really started bothering me, and it didn't get better. My grip strength was terrible, and it hurt if I put any pressure on it at all with my hand cocked back. So I went to my general practitioner, who took x-rays. He didn't see any broken bones, but he thought something was still going on, so he referred me to a hand specialist, who took more xrays at different angles. There were two bones (the scaphoid and the lunate) that looked farther apart on the xray than they should have been. A ligament (the scapholunate ligament) is supposed to be holding the 2 bones closer together, so he had me get an MRI to see if the ligament was torn. Nothing showed up on the MRI, but he still thought I had a very small partial tear, and that I needed arthroscopic surgery to fix it. Otherwise, I would for sure reinjure it, possible tearing the ligament completely, which would require open surgery instead of arthroscopic, and/or I could have arthritis within 5 years. He gave me the alternative option of just putting a cast on it for 8 weeks, and seeing if it healed correctly. However if it didn't heal, or healed incorrectly then he'd have to do surgery anyways, and again not arthroscopically. I'd read online that surgery is most successful and you get the most range of motion back if you do the surgery within 4 months of the injury. I'm wasn't too thrilled about the idea of surgery, especially since I'm trying to finish my thesis by April. But, I guess there's really no good time for these things. By the time of the surgery I would have already been wearing a brace for 5 weeks, and I had probably injured my wrist a month before that. So I decided to just get it over with. The specialist/surgeon (James B. Stafford, IV, M.D.) was very nice, seemed to know what he was talking about, and works at top notch hospitals in the Houston Medical Center, and I trusted him. After sleeping on it for a night and discussing with my family and friends, I called him back and scheduled the surgery for a week later.