“Who needs hands and wrists to have great biceps?”
– David Graham
David Graham has torn the scapholunate ligament in both of his wrists and suffers from serious repetitive strain injuries in both to the point he cannot use a keyboard and mouse, and is limited in what he can do with his hands and wrists.
His injury troubles began in late 2007. During a martial arts class, the instructor was away, and so the class was taken by his second. To warm up, the class was tasked with running back and forth across the sports hall.
For the final run, the instructor told everyone to sprint. As everyone was racing to reach the end first, David misjudged how close he was to the wall and did not give himself enough space to slow down. This led him to having to jump as he reached the wall, hands first.
Unbeknownst to him at that moment, he had injured his wrists. However, he continued with the class, which involved wrist locks. During a demonstration, the instructor was trying to teach one of the students how to do a wrist lock on David’s right wrist.
The lock was not working, and then suddenly it did work. David is unsure whether this moment was the moment he tore his scapholunate ligament in his right wrist, or whether it was running into the wall. But this class was life-changing as he left with a torn ligament in his right wrist and an aching left wrist.
The injuries gave him great difficulty as he was studying a degree at the time in Finance and Investment Management, and was in his final year. He managed to complete the degree and get a 1st. However, the torn scapholunate ligament in his right wrist was discovered, and he ended up requiring surgery on his right wrist to remove some ganglions that had developed.
He often highlights that he was lucky that it was only the ganglions that were removed, rather than reconstructive surgery, which had been originally planned, as it was the last moment decision by him to change from having complete reconstructive surgery. It has since been discovered that reconstructive surgery is not beneficial long term.
After the surgery, it took him three years to recover from the injuries and get back good function in his right wrist. The challenge was always that he kept straining his left wrist while trying to recover. He managed to recover but over the next several years he kept struggling with recurrences of his injuries.
Things came to a head 2019 when his right wrist got really bad, and he could not get it better. He puts this down to typing on a keyboard for too long while sat in a poor position, and something called match betting, which saw him using lots of phones for business purposes. The combination of poor ergonomics why use the computer, added to the high level of mobile phone use, set off repetitive strain injury.
In need of help, he reached out to the doctor and was referred to his original wrist specialist. Doctor Harrison of Queen Elizabeth University. However, unfortunately something went wrong with the referral, and he was told to correct it, he needed to self refer to a physio, which he did.
He was led to believe that he was being seen by a wrist specialist physio. However, unbeknownst to him, he ended up being seen by a just out of university physio, who gave him extremely bad advice. Such bad advice, that he tore the scapholunate ligament in his left wrist while carrying out the exercises instructed of him. Exercises that he should never have been doing.
Thanks to further mistakes in the referral services, added to the coronavirus pandemic which shut down the National Health Service, it would take a year for it to be discovered that he had torn the scapholunate ligament in his left wrist.
The damage of this delay to both of his wrists was such, that in early 2020, he lost near enough complete use of both hands. He could not even lift up a one kilogram dumbbell, and could barely lift food from his plate or hold a small glass of water to drink.
A quote of his is that, “The pain in my left wrist was so bad, the throbbing so continuous, that I could not even walk along the street because the agony it would cause me from the movement was such, it was like somebody was hitting my wrist with a hammer and chisel again and again.”
Because of the severity of the problems, he was told he would not get back much use of his hands and wrists. However, after five years of effort, and through much support from his family, he has regained decent use of his hands and wrists.
He still has severe weaknesses in his wrists. For example, he struggles with anything that requires dexterity, which is why he cannot use a mouse and keyboard, play musical instruments, and his wrists tire out quickly, which limits what he can do, but he is hopeful that he can continue to improve over time.
A quote of his, “If you never give up, you never lose the fight.”
