My name is Nick and I was diagnosed with Kienbock's disease when I was 15 years old. During my sophomore football season, I started to have severe right wrist pain. The range of motion in my wrist was basically limited by 50%. I was barely able to move my wrist at all. No matter what I did the pain persisted. My team trainer iced my wrist, made many splints, and even a chiropractor worked on me. Nothing worked to the least bit. It hurt to write, throw anything, turn certain doorknobs, and just little things. I eventually had to sit out at the end of the football season due to the extreme pain. It was so frustrating!

When I went to the doctors, they took x-rays. They did not see anything out of the normal. I was diagnosed with tendonitis, which I knew wasn't correct. I went months without the proper diagnosis. My x-rays were sent to a sports medicine doctor, who in turn requested an MRI. He wasn't sure what was wrong, but had an inkling about Kienbock's Disease. He sent me to a hand surgeon who was finally able to diagnose me with Kienbock's Disease. I was already in stage 3B.

This was in late November, we scheduled surgery for middle January. The surgery was six days after my birthday. Happy birthday to me! I rushed and got my drivers license three days before surgery, because I wasn't sure how long the actual healing time would be.

In December, my parents took me for a second opinion. We saw the doctor who works on the Ohio State athletes. We were originally scheduled for the Radial Shortening and Bone Graft. Our second opinion doctor, renowned in Columbus, stated that the RS surgery would be all I needed. He thought having both surgeries would create a very long recovery and he believed the Bone Grafting wasn't always a viable option. So we decided on the RS alone. We were led to believe life would be back to 90% in about six months.

Surgery for my Kienbock's was quicker than I had expected. I had the Radial Shortening surgery. Before I went under the knife, I had to get my right arm blocked and receive some medicine for pain for when I woke up. When my arm was blocked, it was completely numb. I could not move it from the elbow down. When I arrived at the room I was going to have surgery in, they put the gas mask on my face and that's all I remember until I woke up. Once I awoke, my arm was still numb. I couldn't even feel the bandage on my arm.

The recovery was a lot quicker than I had expected. The first three days after surgery I couldn't feel my arm. The fourth through seventh day I slowly got feeling back in my fingers. I had to keep my arm in a sling for two weeks. I had to keep that original wrap on for 1 or 2 weeks. When I went to the doctor for a check up, they took the original bandage off and that was the first time I saw the incision. Instead of a cast or the original bandage I wore a wrist splint. At this point, my wrist was incredibly weak. I did have some pain, which was from the surgery. Over time my stitches went away and the scar started to form. After a few months, I was moving my wrist fine. Even though I had lack of rotation, I had no pain. It was hard to sit out of football, track and field and weight lifting. It took about a full year to get completely back into the swing of things.

I am very glad that I had the surgery done. Once I was completely healed from it, I felt so much better than when the Kienbock's really set in. Even though I lost some movement in my wrist, I still would rather have little to no pain rather than the constant pain I was in. I am back to doing the normal things with ease again. I can participate in sports; I'm just limited on how extreme I can be. Overall, having this surgery was a godsend for me because I don't have pain any more.