UKC

I've recently been diagnosed with De Quervain's Tenosynovitis. I'm wondering if anyone here has any experience with this and how you got around training?

What I'm really wanting to know is whether I can still climb without causing any further aggravation to the affected wrist, assuming I avoid any kind of pinching/use of the thumb. 

I don't necessarily have to be pulling hard. I'd be more than happy doing easy circuits at a gentle angle to try and maintain some kind of endurance.

More importantly than training goals I'd just like to be able to climb something if that's at all possible, as the idea of not, isn't going down very well. Thanks in advance. 

I had quite bad De Quervain's in both hands and, while it didn't totally stop me climbing (rightly or wrongly), it had a big impact. For quite a long time I couldn't really do anything other than very easy climbing and I found belaying (especially with a grigri or at the top of a pitch with an ATC) painful.  At it's worst, I had quite a lot of trouble opening the gates on carabiners.

The things that eventually worked for me were splinting and specific physio exercises (and doing a lot less road biking). Before this, mine got so bad that it really impinged on everyday tasks so my advice would be to not delay in getting proper physio and trying to nip it in the bud.  Mine ocassionally flares up a bit but seems to be more aggravated by computer use and road biking than climbing. When mine flares up, I try and use my splints and use voice recognition software to dictate things as much as I can instead of typing.

I had it quite bad in one wrist for a couple of months. For the first month of that I was on holiday (this was back in the days of being young with no commitments!) so I wasn't climbing anyway and I carried on not climbing for the second month when I got home. For 6 weeks of the two months (ie from when I saw the Dr) I was taking diclophenac, an anti inflammatory. I was on holiday in Oz and when I got home, I realised my dosage was double the maximum prescribed in the UK at the time. Regardless, it seemed to fix the problem well for me and after those six weeks it was completely better. I didn't need to do anything else other than rest and I have never had a recurrence since. I suppose the caveat is I was 22 at the time and I bet it would take longer to heal now.

Thank you for both of your replies. Cath I'm sorry to hear that yours still gives you trouble from time to time. With that in mind and the fact it sounds like yours wasn't initially given as much rest as Si's. I think I'll do as advised and avoid using it altogether until it's (hopefully) fully healed.

Si I understand your luck may be more related to your age when you sustained the injury. I can only hope that's not the case and it was more down to the rest you gave it at the time. Thanks again for your help, Tom. 

Thanks - it's generally pretty good these days.  I think the thing that really helped me to rest mine, when that's what was needed, was the splints. If you get the right ones, you can't really move your thumbs.  I was told that excessive movement and holding thumbs in tension can cause it, so the splints prevent that. What I found was that it's really hard to rest your thumbs as you just start to realise how useful they are when you try to rest them. When not resting them I did eccentric exercises with a theraband and that sorted them out eventually.

Good luck.