Hand Therapist Nigel Chua Golfer’s elbow is tennis elbow’s inner-side twin: tendon overload from grip, not golf. Same rules apply: loading beats rest, months not weeks, and pain plus ring-finger tingling means the nerve next door is involved.
Tennis elbow is tendon degeneration, not inflammation, which is why rest and pills disappoint. The fix is months of graded loading. Here’s the honest 6 to 12 month timeline, and why starting early decides which version you get.
De Quervain’s tenosynovitis, the mummy wrist: thumb-side pain that flares when you lift thumbs-up. Splint early and change the lifting technique, and it’s a 4 to 6 week story. Push through it, and it ruins the first year of parenthood.
A broken wrist knits in about 6 weeks. But the outcome is decided in weeks 6 to 12, exactly when most people are discharged with an exercise sheet. Here’s the honest timeline, the red flags, and what good rehab looks like.
The scaphoid is the wrist bone that hides on first X-rays and dies quietly when missed. Fall plus tenderness in the hollow at the thumb base means scaphoid until proven otherwise. Here’s the self-check, the protocol, and why casualness costs wrists.
Most jammed fingers are minor. But four other injuries wear the same costume on day one, and two get permanently worse if ignored. Run the 4-question self-sort: tip straightens, tip bends, finger looks straight, joint never popped out.
Night tingling in the thumb, index and middle fingers that shakes out is early carpal tunnel, and a night splint genuinely helps. Constant numbness and a flattening thumb mound mean the nerve is dying. Here’s the honest timeline between those two points.
A drooping fingertip after a ball strike is a torn tendon, however little it hurts. The fix is a splint worn dead straight for 6 to 8 weeks, and one bend restarts the clock. The cheapest good outcome in hand therapy, bought entirely with discipline.
Trigger finger is a tendon catching on a thickened pulley at the base of your finger. Caught at the click stage, a splint usually settles it in 6 weeks. At the locking stage, the options narrow. Here’s the honest timeline.