Soft Tissue Damage and Tendon/Nerve Trauma.

[Pika]

Hi madisongrrl-
Tell us more about the pain in your quad- then it is easier to know what to do.
Does it hurt all the time or only when you move it a certain way- does it hurt more when you straighten your knee or bent it?
Where is the pain- is it closer to your hip or your knee- on the inside or outside?
Is there a lump where it hurts?

Your wrist sounds like it could be a big problem! Does your hand or some of your fingers fall asleep? Does it get worse with certain movement? (bending your wrist up or down- or side to side?
A hand therapist or OT can be a big help- be sure to keep that splint on for now though- if it is really swollen you will have to rest it and a splint can usually help with that.

With more info wahine and Knot ( or me) can you you some more specific advice

[madisongrrl]

Hi madisongrrl-
Tell us more about the pain in your quad- then it is easier to know what to do.
Does it hurt all the time or only when you move it a certain way- does it hurt more when you straighten your knee or bent it?
Where is the pain- is it closer to your hip or your knee- on the inside or outside?
Is there a lump where it hurts?

My quad hurts mostly all the time. Maybe slightly more when it's bent, but I can feel it there all the time. The pain is between my hip and knee...but is a little closer to my knee....and is slightly on the outside of my left leg. I think I fell on the handle bar of my bike when I running the bike (the race was pure rain and mud) but I can't say for sure what happened. I think there is indeed a lump where it hurts.

Your wrist sounds like it could be a big problem! Does your hand or some of your fingers fall asleep? Does it get worse with certain movement? (bending your wrist up or down- or side to side?
A hand therapist or OT can be a big help- be sure to keep that splint on for now though- if it is really swollen you will have to rest it and a splint can usually help with that.

With more info wahine and Knot ( or me) can you you some more specific advice

The wrist is turning out to be a huge problem. Most of the numbness has gone away. But sometimes when I take off the splint I'm still getting a little numbness up the inside of my pinky finger. I can move my wrist around, but mostly I try to wear the splint and rest the tendon. Dropping the bar ends, changing my grips, having a wrist watch that was on too tight and slogging through 4 hours of a muddy race caused this. You can see that the tendon is swollen right underneath my wrist watch line.

Thanks!

[Pika]

Thanks for the info- sounds like you have given yourself a nice contusion in the muscle- there are a few concerns with this type of injury.
If it happened about a month ago the tissue should be well on its way to healing- but then you raced again after that right?
Tissue healing (if you don't reaggravate) it is about 4-6 weeks.
At this time you want to keep the tissue ( muscle) mobile with out further aggravating it.
Some very light self massage can help- if it too tender on the lump just work around it. I like to use this http://www.thestick.com/. Some of my patients just use a rolling pin though!
Sometimes with a very big contusion the bruise can go right to the bone and then the bone thinks it needs to try and heal so your body starts to produce calicum deposits in the muscle. This is called myositis ossificans.
Aggressive stretching and massage can make this problem worse- the best thing to do is very light gentle range of motion -
1) lying on your back slide your heel to your bum
2) lying on your stomach bend your knee until you feel a gentle stretch in your thigh- then lower it slowly.
The trick is to keep you muscle working gently and not overdoing it.
PT will help- so keep that apt- they may need to use some modalities to help break up the scar tissue around the injury- other more aggressive stretching and massage can help too if there is no indication of myositis ossificans.
If the lump is very soft and mobile it is likely just scar tissue- if it is very hard or still hot and red then please be gentle with the stretches!

hope that helps

[madisongrrl]

I ordered the stick. I want to do a little prework before I goto PT. Do hand injuries of this nature also take a long time period to recover from?