The first week: bandage, elevation and doing very little
Your wrist will be in a bulky bandage or a splint for about a week, until your first follow-up appointment. Keep it on, keep it clean and keep it dry. The bandage is doing two jobs: protecting the wound in your palm and stopping you using the hand in ways that pull on it.
Keep the hand raised above the level of your heart as much as you can for the first few days, resting it on a pillow when you sit and propped up when you sleep. This is the single most effective thing for the throbbing and swelling. Let the fingers move gently from the start, opening and closing them without forcing, to keep them from stiffening and to help pump swelling away. Do not lift, grip or push with the hand, and do not get the bandage wet. A waterproof cover that seals above the wrist makes showering straightforward.
The local anesthetic wears off within hours. Take the pain relief you were advised to take before it does. Most people find the first two or three days sore, then steadily better.
What the hand will feel like
A few things are normal and worth knowing about in advance, because they worry people who are not expecting them.
Pillar pain. A deep ache on either side of the scar, at the base of the palm, when you press or lean on the hand. It is common, it is not a sign anything has gone wrong, and it can take weeks to months to fade completely. Pushing up out of a chair with the flat of that hand is the thing that sets it off.
A tender scar. The scar sits right in the working part of the palm, and it is often sensitive to touch or pressure for a while. Gentle massage once the wound is fully healed helps, and our guide to scar care after surgery covers when and how.
Numbness that lifts slowly. The night-time pins and needles often go almost immediately, which is the part people remember. Constant numbness in the fingertips can take weeks or months to recover, and if the nerve was badly squashed for a long time before the operation, some may not come back fully. Your surgeon will have discussed this with you beforehand.
Weak grip. The hand is weaker than before for several weeks, and grip strength typically returns over two to three months as the healed ligament settles and you use the hand again. Hand therapy exercises, if you were given them, are how you speed this up.
Living one-handed for a fortnight
The recovery is not hard. Life with one hand is. A few things make it much easier.
Dressing is the first surprise. Buttons, zips and bras are two-handed jobs. Loose clothing you can pull on, slip-on shoes, and a button hook and zipper pull get you through the week without asking for help.
In the kitchen, jars, bottles and cans are the enemy. A mounted or lever jar opener that works one-handed, pre-cut vegetables, and meals that need one hand to eat cover most of it. Do the heavier cooking before the operation and freeze it.
Washing means keeping the bandage dry. A waterproof arm cover, or a plastic bag taped well above the wrist, lets you shower normally. Wash your hair with the other hand or ask for help for the first few days.
If the operated hand is your writing and mouse hand, a fortnight of one-handed typing is realistic. Voice dictation on your phone or laptop is better than most people expect and worth switching on for the week.
After the bandage comes off
At the first follow-up, usually around a week, the bandage comes off and the wound is checked. Stitches, if you have the kind that need removing, come out at ten to fourteen days. From here you will be shown movement exercises or referred for hand therapy, and you can start using the hand for light tasks: eating, writing, dressing, holding a cup.
Gentle wrist and finger movements keep everything gliding. Therapy putty, in graded resistances, is what hand therapists give out for rebuilding grip once the wound has healed, a few minutes several times a day rather than one long session. Stop anything that produces sharp pain in the palm.
Many people are advised to keep wearing a wrist splint at night for a few weeks. The splint keeps the wrist straight while you sleep, which is exactly when most of us bend it hard for hours without noticing, and a straight wrist is a comfortable healing wrist.
Work, driving and getting back to normal
How soon you return to work depends almost entirely on what you do with your hands. Desk work is often possible within a week or two, one-handed at first. Anything involving gripping, lifting, vibrating tools or repetitive wrist bending is usually a month or more, and your surgeon will give you a number for your job.
When you do go back to a desk, this is the moment to change the setup that may have contributed to the problem. A vertical mouse keeps the wrist in a handshake position rather than flat and twisted. A keyboard low enough that your wrists are straight, and regular breaks, cost nothing.
Driving needs a hand that can grip the wheel and turn it hard without pain, which for most people is one to two weeks after the bandage comes off, and never while the hand is bandaged. Our driving after surgery guide covers the rest.
Most people are back to normal activities within about a month. The scar and the pillar pain take longer to fade, and the final result, with the numbness as good as it is going to get and full strength back, is judged at around three to six months.
Warning signs to take seriously
Contact your surgeon or the hospital if you notice:
Increasing pain, redness or swelling around the wound, or fluid leaking from it, especially if it is cloudy or smells.
A high temperature or feeling generally unwell.
Numbness or tingling that is getting worse rather than better, or new numbness in fingers that were fine before.
Bleeding that soaks the bandage and does not stop with pressure and elevation.
The short version
Keep the hand up and the bandage dry for a week. Move the fingers, not the wrist. Expect an ache at the base of the palm and a weak grip for a few weeks, and expect the night-time tingling to go quickly. Get your one-handed kit sorted before the operation, not after. And use the return to work as the moment to fix the desk that helped cause this in the first place.