I’m specifically NOT looking for medical advice. I have a primary care physician plus a referral to a hand specialist from the facility that treated me after my incident, so I’ll go to one of them for actual advice. I’m just looking for personal experiences.
A few weeks ago a knife slipped and I cut- well, stabbed, really- the base of my left index finger. I went to a minor emergency center and got three stitches. They were taken out after a week and the cut seems to be healing up just fine, but I still have two issues. One, I’m feeling nerve weirdness along what I presume to be one specific nerve pathway, basically along the side of my finger. If I rub it lightly, it feels tingly, sort like it’s about halfway back from anaesthetization. Two, if I accidentally put a lot of pressure or weight on that part of my finger- like, if I pick up a full gallon container of milk with my left hand, or pick up one of my kids under their arms- I feel a jolt of pain going down the injured finger.
I’m a little concerned, because I know nerves supposedly don’t regenerate. On the other hand, I know lots of people have gotten cuts or surgical incisions, and it seems that if they all had lasting nerve damage I’d have heard about something about it.
So… has anyone had similar cuts/wounds/incisions that seemed to affect a nerve? Did it eventually get better?
I had a cut to my knuckle when I was in school. I had the same loss of sensation between the affected middle finger and my ring finger. It came back over time. I had a colleague who had a big operation to her stomach and she lost a lot of sensation below the scar, I think all the way down to her leg. Not sure if that went away.
The peripheral nerve system (i.e., not the brain or the spinal cord) has the ability to repair/regrow. When a nerve is severed, it regrows at a speed of a few millimeters per day. The part that I’m unsure about is what happens when the two ends don’t line up. It seems like things can still heal but it takes longer.
I’m at 7 months after a major cut to my leg and still experiencing the sort of half-numb tingly sensation you describe. My doctor says its hit and miss exactly how it will heal, but I have definitely seen a trend toward less of the numb/tingly sensation. It’s down to maybe a third or a quarter of how it felt right after the injury. I would be surprised if it wasn’t fully back to normal by next year.
I don’t notice any problem with weight or movement except that swelling from the injury seems to inflame a particular tendon which translates to bursitis-like pain in my heel. Even that is getting better; for a while, my entire ankle hurt like that.
I had surgery on my armpit like 3 or 4 years ago. My tricep, or at least the skin along my tricep, still is numb when touched. No jolt of pain I don’t think, but it is very annoying when the area is rubbed.
I had a similar cut on my right index finger at the second knuckle. Your experience sounds exactly like mine. It took maybe 3 months or so before it felt normal again.
I was shaving an electrical cord with a pen knife about ten years ago. Stupid me, cutting a plastic cord about a metal wire. Shaved off a piece of skin next to my nail on the tip of my index finger. It’s 90% today by I still know it happened. Took five years to get to about 50% normal.
A bartender washes glasses in a sink that has two rotating brushes. You take two glasses, shove them down onto the brushes, and pull them out to be rinsed in a standing tub.
25 years ago, I was dutifully doing this and one of the glasses broke on the brush. A sliver of glass cut through my left third finger, right between the first knuckle and my finger tip.
I couldn’t feel anything there so it was a horror to bring my hand up. I was stitched in a hospital, no projection of longterm damage. But to this day, I can’t feel that section of my finger except for what feels like an electric shock when something hits it just the right way. I can feel the numbness now as I’m typing. The shocks are few and far between. You get used to it.
I cut my index finger in the same place you did some 30+ years ago.
I can’t remember the details right after it happened, but I do know now that when I bend my finger, I can feel a popping sensation (It doesn’t hurt) and if I stick my finger up to my ear and bend it, my finger sounds like a bowl of Rice Krispies.
On the plus side, I’m a real hoot at parties when I let people pinch my finger as I bend it so they can feel the popping sensation too. They get icked out by it.
Some 20+ years ago, I accidentally poked the tip of a knife into the side of my left index finger at the exact point where the crease next to the second knuckle starts. I felt a shock go through my finger. The wound was very small and didn’t bleed much. I discovered that there was a small patch of numbness that started just below the fingernail, about half as wide as the nail, and the length extended about half the distance toward the first knuckle. It took several months to regain feeling there.
I grabbed a knife one time and had all 4 of my fingers cut to the bone. I don’t rememeber how long it took but they feel normal now. I think it was several years.
I examined my fingers after I posted. They are no where near normal. I have just gotten used to it. No feeling on the inside side of my little finer and ring finger and reduced feeling in the last 2 joints all the way to the tip, some loss of feeling in middle finger and index finger feels pretty normal.
I jacked my fingers up 20+ years ago, with electric hedge clippers to the bone on my right ring finger. I also jacked up the pinky and FU finger on that hand, but not to the bone like the ring finger. It doesn’t cause any discomfort anymore, but I have no doubt that it’s never going to be right again. The nerves did recover very slowly for a few years, but never completely. Mostly they just quit tingling, which was a mild annoyance for a pretty long time.
The best way I can describe is like this. If I rub my thumbs against the insides (fleshy part) of my ring fingers on both hands, I can feel both digits on my left hand. On my right hand, I can barely feel any sensation from the fleshy part of the inside the middle knuckle. Everything above, below and outside of that knuckle is as normal as it ever was.
Basically, if your fingers are all still attached and move when and how you want them to without pain, you’ll be fine. The rest will be a minor annoyance for a while, then you won’t even notice it. Unless you continue to experience pain or feel significantly diminished after the wounds heal completely, I wouldn’t throw any money at hand specialists or neurosurgeons. They probably won’t be able to do much for you anyway.
Very much the same situation. I whacked a ceramic blade into my lefty index finger about 1cm below the middle knuckle. Deep enough to go to the ED at the hospital, they ended up closing it with a bunch of I strips rather than put in stitches.
That was a few months back, I have the same tingling sensation when I run my thumb over the scar and hit the wrong spot and it fkn hurts like a stabbing. Generally I’ve learned to adapt to it.
I sliced the hell out of my thumb, stitches and everything. I nicked a vessel and (I’m guessing on this part*) apparently a nerve. I have a streak of weird unpleasant numbness along the side of my thumb. It has lessened since the incident, and seems to be sloooowwwlyyy going away. For a while afterward, though, it was extremely unpleasant. The feeling is mostly back at this point, but rubbing it still feels …a bit weird.
The doctor told me the bleeding that WOULD.NOT.STOP was due to the blood vessel getting nicked; I am guessing about the nerve part.
I had surgery to repair my ulna when I was 16. There are two large, nearly parallel scars on my right elbow. It took years for the feeling to return between the incisions and even to this day (32 years later) the lower part of the area where the scars end is still 80% numb, maybe about 2 sq in of skin. If I accidentally hit the scars it hurts like others mentioned, like a sharp stab, and it makes me say naughty words out loud.
Something I learned the hard way, if you have a severe wound to your hand, demand a plastic surgeon.
Trust me you do not want somebody that does meatball surgery working on your hands.
I still have some numbness in my one index finger almost 10 years later.
few months ago, i worked a kitchen at a restaurant. wile trying sharpen a knife , a quick move or instinct made me make a deep cut to my middle finger. since that day the wound has been recovered but still yet as many described, at the scar area i cant much feel the skin but, the under the skin i feel ache. its like the cut path is still there. i dont like it. anyhow i just looked for other people who had the same exp as me. so its good to know that i could find others opinions on that matter, although i wish you all recover .
I have no idea if this is a common experience, but I had knee surgery and the skin around the scar (8 inch scar, old-school surgeon refused to to laparoscopy) was numb, tingly, and painful for about 10 years straight, with no sign of improvement. I also had some balance issues that might have been due to damage to the proprioceptive nerves. Then, I started doing a lot of yoga, which involves kneeling a fair amount. At first, it was fairly painful, but the nerves quickly adapted and in the course of about a year almost all of the weirdness went away and I now have virtually normal sensation in that knee. I don’t think there’s anything particularly special about yoga, but I thought I’d point out that even after a decade, healing is still a possibility, if you find the right kind of stimulation.
