After six surgeries, a skin graft and intensive rehab, I still couldn't open jars or water bottles, or put on the splint I had to wear at night to keep the fingers on my crippled hand from contracting.
"Even if it hadn't, if I'd had to tape my arm to my body and walk with a splint, I wouldn't have missed it," my patient said with a fierce look in his eyes.
The lack of blinding could introduce a bias but this bias is more likely to be in favour of splinting (i.e. those patients with an active intervention more likely to report favourable results).
I had shin splints, I got sprains, I couldn't run as far," said Madi, who is now a freshman in college and a soccer player with a healthy diet — and an outspoken advocate for awareness of eating disorders among teenagers and their parents.
I have spina bifida, which among other things means my legs are partly paralysed (so I walk with crutches and knee-high splints), and I have a heightened risk of joint, nerve and organ damage.
Using a centrally administered computer randomization system consented patients will be allocated to one of two groups: i) splint group who will be given a static splint at approximately 10 to 14 days after surgery to be worn for 6 months at night time only as well as hand therapy; ii) non-splint group, who will receive hand therapy only.
So we went to the hospital and they pulled the skin back together and put my fingers in one of those metal splints so I wouldn't be able to move them around and tear the skin open again.
Months after the surgical tape and splint came off, I typed the words "immersion blender" into Google — tentatively, as there is still some numbness — and learned of the device's invention in the 1950s by a Swiss man, Roger Perrinjaquet, who called it a Bamix, combining the French verbs "battre," meaning to beat, and "mixer".
I splinted the leg as best I could and started to lever myself down the mountain, clumsily, with my arms.
Still, I had a good stretcher-side manner and I could splint and bandage as well as anyone.
I wear splints on my wrists at night so I will ask Lizzie to take them off me before I get out of bed when she arrives.
