Spasticity and Splints - Part 9: Operation

At one point, we had to play around with the timing of my Botox injections because 6 months had become too long in between, but 5 months was too soon. Unfortunately, we never found a happy-medium. I had been having meetings with the Hand and Wrist surgical team to find out if there is a surgical option to combat the spasticity permanently, without the need for the Botox.

Over the last few months, there had been a lot of speculation about whether or not surgery would be the best option for me because of the way I use my hand and arm to move around the floor.

The operation lengthened muscles that pull my fingers closed, so that they can’t clamp shut. Before they did the operation, they said they would only lengthen the muscles a little bit, about 30%, and then go back in if more was needed. The reason for this is because if they lengthened them too much, my fingers would lose too much tone and hyper-extend backwards.

The surgery was scheduled for 31 October, 2025. The surgery I had is called Fracturtoral Digitoral Finger Lengthening, which basically means that they lengthened the finger muscles. As with all surgeries, especially elective surgeries, there was a chance that it would have been postponed, but luckily it wasn’t.

I wasn’t allowed to eat before the surgery unless I finished my last meal at some ungodly hour, like 6 or 7am, so I decided to get up at my normal time and not eat breakfast. I was starving!

I had to be on the ward D5 at QA Hospital for 12 noon. I couldn’t see a clock in the entrance of the hospital but my mum said that we arrived at the hospital in plenty of time to get to the ward – it wasn’t even 11am yet, so my mum and I stopped to talk to the Veteran, who was selling poppies for the Royal British Legion, and his dog. The dog was an old golden Labrador and so content, he put his head on my lap. After a few minutes of chatting, my mum and I got in the lift and made our way to the ward. I was looking around for signs, and looking at each ward sign, and eventually we got to D5.

There was a buzzer system to get into the ward and I wasn’t sure if it was working because it was a while before we were let in. I checked in and my mum and I were shown to my room. The room had its own en-suite toilet and shower room, as well as a TV. It also had an overhead hoist, so I took my sling just in case I couldn’t walk after the general anaesthetic, but luckily, I was able to.

I got into the bed and put my hospital gown on, and I think it could fit twice around me. I was conscious about the gown being thin because I didn’t want to rip it or pull it off with my involuntary movements. It wasn’t very practical for me to use my phone in the bed because I had the leg part up to keep my bum from sliding but that meant that my phone was at the wrong angle, so I couldn’t see the screen properly and I couldn’t really get my feet into the right position to be able to use the phone anyway.

At that point, it all became very real.