How Has It Been 3 Years Since My Last Quilting Post?!
- mamajayna3
- 6 days ago
- 7 min read
I just don't know how time gets away from me! I love being able to share what I'm doing in the sewing room and on the longarm and that just hasn't happened for awhile. In my defense, I did have 2 hand/arm surgeries and was out of commission for quite a while, but I did manage a few quilts in between surgeries and once I was completely healed, I got right back to quilting as soon as I could. I went through almost a year and 1/2 of physical therapy. You don't realize how much you do with your hands and how much you depend on them! The surgery was on my right hand, which is my dominant hand; the hand I do EVERYTHING with. It was very difficult to learn to write with my left hand and even harder to read what I'd written, let alone doing the day to day things! LOL.
Have you ever heard of Tenosynovitis? Neither had I. The back of my hand started getting a soft bump on it in the shape of an oval and at first I thought it was probably a cyst. I had a cyst removed from the underside of my wrist on that same hand, so it was a logical thought. However, it got to the point where I was losing motion and it became pretty painful. When I finally got to a hand surgeon, he said I have tenosynovitis and I said, "What?!" Apparently, the tendons in your hands can get inflamed and fill with fluid. The inflammation is what caused the pain and lack of motion. I had x-rays done which showed exactly what the doctor had suspected but also that my wrist bone was rubbing on one of the metacarpal bones in my wrist and wearing away at the bone. He said that I was going to probably need surgery because he felt that the bone-on-bone was most likely the culprit of all the inflammation and he suggested that he open up my arm, cut my ulna bone in half, remove a portion of it and then put a plate and screws in to hold it together again. I thought that was a bit extreme and asked if there was something we could do to avoid that. He said we could try some steroid shots first to see if that would help take the inflammation down and then he would evaluate me after that. I was only allowed to have 2 shots and I think they had to be 4-6 weeks apart and they did help take the pain and inflammation down, but it came right back after some time. So, into surgery I went.
I had surgery November 28, 2023. The surgery went well, however, it was difficult to do simple every day tasks. My husband was such a great help to me. I wouldn't have been able to do anything without him. I went to physical therapy as soon as the stitches were out which felt good having my hand wrapped and heated and then iced. It was the actual exercises and manipulating my hand that was so painful. Even though I had been really good about doing my exercises at home, the recovery felt very slow.
I was still asleep in the recovery room when they put the cast on and they did it way too tight. You can see how my ring finger is squished and overlapped. It was so tight, it was cutting off my circulation, so I had to go back after 3 days and have another one put on. This time I could tell them how tight or loose it was.
This is the big reveal!
It didn't look too bad other than the swelling.
You can really see here how much swelling there was in my hand.
The stitches were removed and it really didn't look terrible!
I was happy about that.
By January 15th, and after a month of physical therapy, I was feeling pretty good and my hand seemed to be doing well so I decided to catch up on some longarm quilting. I ended up finishing a Christmas quilt and an old flannel kids quilt that I had made years ago. I also quilted a picnic quilt and a flag quilt. So, in 4 days I had 4 quilts quilted! It felt SO GOOD to be quilting again.
During the month of January, I joined a fabric swap through Red Rainboots Handmade.
It was the first fabric swap I had ever done and was so excited about it. For however many 5" squares I wanted to receive, I cut that many and sent them in (*Disclosure - I ordered a special ergonomic cutter called My Comfort Cutter from The Grace Company which didn't put any pressure on my wrist which made it bearable for me to cut). Then Julia, from Red Rainboots Handmade, and her kids, swapped all the fabrics received and shipped back to us the amount requested. I ended up with some amazing fabrics. By the time the sew along started in mid-February, I was having trouble with my hand again. Because I couldn't do any cutting, I did the next best thing and taught my husband to cut and then I was able to sew the pieces together without hurting my hand! You can find a blog post about it during my 2023/2024 quilt reviews.
And this is how my hand looked one month later. Maybe I overdid it and got a little excited about quilting, but my hand felt really good and seemed fine at the time. Unfortunately, I had to go back to see my hand surgeon. He was surprised to see this and ended up extracting fluid out of my hand, then gave me another steroid shot and had me come back a month later.
I had to have my hand, clear to my elbow, on a flat board 1/2 cast for two weeks after the drainage and steroid shot. Trying to sleep with that and go to work, was a little overwhelming!
By the end of February my hand was not getting better and my surgeon recommended that I go back to surgery and have him do what he originally suggested. I was so disappointed about it. Now I was facing a more invasive surgery with a longer recovery time. It was not great news! We let it go for a little while to see if any more changes for the better happened, which they didn't. I ended up scheduling the second surgery at the end of May so I could use the end of the school year as part of my healing time. I ended up taking 6 weeks of medical leave and didn't return to work until August of 2024. Having that recovery time was essential in the healing process and I'm so glad I took the time.
The bruising was something else. You can see how blue my knuckles are. I had bruising
clear up to my elbow and I think you will know why when you take a look at the x-rays!
This is the result of the tenosynovectomy and the extensor retinaculum lengthening. In the first surgery, the surgeon only did the tenosynovectomy which cleans out the tendon sheath of all the inflammation. The second surgery he repeated the tenosynovectomy and then cut through the wrist band (extensor retinaculum). He made a "Z" cut, lengthening the band and sewed it back together. This loosens the band on the tendons and allows more movement and hopefully, less inflammation. I told the physician's assistant when he came in to take out the stitches that his stitches were a little wonky. I think he took offense to my comment! LOL.
This is where the surgeon cut my ulna bone in 1/2, took out a small piece of bone, about 1/8 - 1/4" and then connected the two cut pieces together with a plate and 7 screws. This incision was about 7" long.
You can see the bone on the far right of my arm is the one that the surgeon shortened. There's now a lot of space between the top of it and the metacarpal bone. That was the goal!
Here's an enlargement of the plate and only 3 of the screws. There are 4 more screws in that!
Fast forward a year and a half and I'm doing great! Back to quilting and doing longarm work for myself and customers and it feels great getting back to what I love. I hope you didn't get too grossed out by the pictures. I think it's fascinating what can be done medically and I definitely learned terms I had never heard before. What are the odds! I know that it was caused by my quilting and overuse. Rolling quilts onto to rails on the longarm certainly didn't help either but I didn't realize it could cause that much of a problem since I had never heard of it happening to anyone else. I wonder if other quilters have had the same problem? I do still get some stiffness when I overdo it, but my husband bought me an awesome hand massager and I'll do that along with some heat and I'm good to go again.
Stick around for more actual "quilt" posts. I'm going to do some yearly reviews for 2023, 2024, and 2025 and then let you know what I plan to work on for 2026. Lot's of quilty goodness coming your way! Happy New Year 2026!
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