The TFCC is your wrist’s meniscus, and a torn one is the classic missed injury: a “sprain” that still hurts with rotation and pushing at week 3. Most recover without surgery, if the brace-rebuild-reload sequence starts early.
That smooth lump on the back of your wrist is almost certainly a ganglion cyst: trapped joint fluid, not cancer, and about half vanish on their own. Here’s how to tell, when to treat, and why the Bible-smash method needs to die.
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.
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.