Recently, while Olympic lifting (overhead), i suffered an injury when i failed on a movement and my elbow struck my knee, ultimately causing a hyperextended wrist (backwards). I immediately dropped the weight and upper body lifting for 2 weeks. The 2 weeks were filled with stiffness, immediate mobility loss, nagging pain, no swelling, loss of grip strength, and pain when spreading fingers. Most terrible symptom was pain when pushing on bottom of hand like if i were to do a push-up.
After 2 weeks and no improvement, i visited the doctor under the impression that i had broken one of the carpal bones inside of the wrist. I had been through similar pain, pain that did not feel like ligament pain and felt inside of the bones, 4 years prior when I broke my scaphoid bone playing hockey in the same wrist. I had a screw put into my scaphoid bone to hold it together. Up until the injury, had retained about 95% mobility and a very successful surgery. I thought that the pressure of the extension combined with the increased strength of my scaphoid bone, might have messed with one of the other 7 bones inside the wrist. Once at the clinic (military clinic), the took a x-ray and determined they could not see a break.
After 2 more weeks (1 month total), i have seen no improvements in my wrist, no increase ability to put pressure on my wrist, about 60% normal mobility. I have felt very unsatisfied with my assistance with my Military Healthcare provider and don't really know where else to go. I am forced to use this service and after they have provided me little guidance on the way forward for my wrist, i am not sure how to continue forward with recovering my wrist.
At this point, my questions are:
1.)Advice on rehab procedures. I received absolutely no way forward for this injury from my HCP
2.)Should i be doing mobility work? Is it possible to do long lasting damage because of the slow development of wrist fractures in the wrist? Is it possible that the sudden loss of mobility may be causing the pain and the solution is proper mobility work?
3.)Should i continue to assume that there is no fracture and slowly add weight resistance to my injured wrist?
4.) At what point do i return to the clinic for an additional x-ray to reconfirm? The first scaphoid fracture went diagnosed through my first x-ray as well. I then played the remained of the hockey season with the fracture before having another x-ray conducted showing the wrist. I would prefer to avoid surgery this time.
Thank you in advance!
-Dave