Every hand operation comes with two recoveries.
The first is the tissue healing on its own clock: bone in about 6 weeks, tendon repairs in about 12, nerves at roughly a millimeter a day. You can’t speed that up. You can only protect it.
The second is the movement you win back in the weeks that clock allows. That one is YOURS, and it doesn’t wait. Stiffness that’s soft at week 6 is setting by month 3.
Every guide below is written week by week, tells you what’s usually normal, and names the window you’re in.
Where are you right now?
- Deciding on surgery: start with “Before surgery.”
- Just had it: find your operation below, then read “Is this normal after surgery?”
- Weeks in and it isn’t going to plan: jump to “When recovery stalls.”
Before surgery
- Questions to ask before hand surgery
- Hand therapy or surgery: which comes first?
- Wide-awake (WALANT) hand surgery
Finger and thumb surgery
- Trigger finger release
- What not to do after trigger finger surgery
- Still clicking after trigger finger release
- Trapeziectomy (thumb base arthritis)
- Trapeziectomy with suspensionplasty (LRTI)
- The trapeziectomy scar
- Thumb UCL repair
- Flexor tendon repair
- Extensor tendon repair
- Dupuytren’s surgery or needle release
- Finger joint replacement
- Finger or wrist fusion
- Nerve repair
- Tendon transfer
- Finger reattachment (replantation)
Wrist surgery
- Carpal tunnel release
- Still numb after carpal tunnel surgery
- Bruising after carpal tunnel surgery
- Overdid it after carpal tunnel surgery
- Broken wrist plate and screws
- Scaphoid screw
- TFCC repair
- Wrist arthroscopy
- Ganglion removal
- De Quervain’s release
- SLAC and SNAC wrist surgery
Elbow and forearm surgery
- Cubital tunnel release or transposition
- Tennis elbow surgery
- Distal biceps repair
- Elbow release for stiffness
- Forearm fracture plating
The surgeon fixes the structure. The weeks after decide whether it moves.
Is this normal after surgery?
- Swollen hand after surgery
- Wound healing or infection?
- Hard lump in the scar
- Scar care: massage, silicone and the 6-month window
- K-wires and pin care
- Can’t straighten a finger after surgery
When recovery stalls
- Stiff hand after a cast or surgery
- Splints for stiff joints
- Still hurting after it healed
- CRPS: pain out of proportion
Living with it while it heals
- Life with one hand
- How to sleep after hand surgery
- Driving after surgery
- Returning to work
- Back to the gym
- Golf after hand or wrist surgery
The operation is one day. The recovery is the next 3 months, and most of it is yours.
Written by Nigel Chua, hand occupational therapist in practice since 2005. Thousands of hands, wrists and elbows assessed and treated. My credentials are here. These pages explain; they don’t examine. Your surgeon’s or doctor’s plan comes first.