Fused wrist?

Hey everyone 

Bringing this thread back to life. Doctors are talking about  doing a radioscapholunate fusion. They say it will be a partial fusion and the joint above it looks to be in decent shape so I'll have some movement but not much. 
Little background I Broke and dislocated my wrist Oct 4 of 2020. I've had 4 surgeries on it including an external fixator during the first surgery as they couldn't get my wrist to stay in the joint. After 4 years I have really serve arthritis, 30 percent of movement and a lot of pain. There isn't a ton of information out there about fusions and partial fusion, I'm wondering how you guys have been functioning with yours in your day to day life. I currently struggle to have a normal life let alone even the thought of being able to touch a bike. I was able to ride a ttr 125 on the ice for about 45 mins this winter but then couldn't function for 3 days, so the days of motos are long gone 

intrested I'm hearing about your guys. 
 

Pretty sure Villapoto's wrist is fused that's why his elbow is so low when he twist the throttle lol I could be wrong🤷‍♂️

I'll tell you my story. It may be a bit long so if you just want  the important points, skip to the last paragraph. So I broke my scaphoid on my left arm while skateboarding back in 2010 ( I wasn't sure it was broken at the time, but it will come back in the story). I was a canadian in california with no health insurance so I just braced it and kept going. For years and years it always bugged me, sometimes worst then other, but I would wear a brace and go easy on it for a couple of weeks and the pain would get back to a manageable level. In 2021, I broke my radius while snowboarding (there was no doubt this time). I went to the ER and the doctor, after taking some radiography said, ''we can plate your radius but I don't know what to do with your scaphoid''. It had been dead for a good 10 years from his estimate and there was a good dose of arthritis in there as well. He did not understand how I was able to ride mountain bike and dirt bike with the condition that my wrist was in. To be fair, I could ride, but it was painful, and I couldn't really do two days in a row.  After seeing a specialist, his proposition was to do a four-corner fusion. I told him I was gonna see what my arm felt like after taking the cast  off.

Now when I tried to get back to riding, it just wasn't working. I don't know if I fucked up my scaphoid even more when I broke my radius or what, but the pain was way worst. I could do a lap or two, but as soon as I would hit a bump that would force my left wrist to tilt inward, I was done. The pain wasn't THAT bad, but it was sharp  and I would essentially  lose all strenght in my wirst for a couple of days. It was hard to even hold a plastic cup for exemple. I bought and tried to ride with a mobius wrist brace, but it wasn't stiff enough, The mobius is very good at limiting the up and down movement of the wrist, but it still let your wrist move from side to side quite a bit, which is the movement that was the most detrimental to my wrist.

Around that time, I started doing a lot of dead-hang. I don't remember why I started doing it, but probably to try to get my arm pump problem to manageable level. I would just hold my chin-up bar for as long as I could, untill my forearm were burning. The first thing I notice was how weak my left arm was compared to my right arm. But then, after doing it 3-4 times a week for a couple of weeks, I could noticeably feel a decline in the pain in my wrist. I was also able to lift things with it that I wasn't able to before. While doing this, I kept looking at different braces and tried that one :

https://www.homehealthcareshoppe.com/wrist-brace-with-boa?gad_source=1&…

Now, the combination of doing a lot of dead-hang and that wrist brace got me back on track. The wrist brace is stiff enough to prevent any up-down AND side-to side mobility, but at no time do I feel it being limiting while riding. I can now ride two days in a row without too much of a hassle. If my wrist is painful at night, I sleep with the brace on and it is usually a good bit better the next morning when I wake up. But I want to be clear that the dead-hang are playing a very important role in the equation. If I stop doing them for 2-3 weeks because I'm lazy (it takes 2-3 minutes to do so there is really no excuses), the pain creeps back into my wrist and I feel it pretty noticeably when I go ride.

I don't know if the result I got are replicable in any way as I never talk about it to anyone, but it sure is worth a try if you are considering a fusion. Also, I don't know how the brace would feel if I had to wear it on my throttle hand because it's basically a temporary wrist fusion when you wear it. But I can say for sure that my wrist feels A LOT better now than it did two years ago after removing the cast, and better than it felt even 5 or 6 years ago. I don't know if it will last forever, but I currently feel no need for the four-corner fusion, and I was thinking about it almost everyday for a period of about 3 months after removing the cast. The mobility in my wrist never improved throught the process as I had and still only have about 40% of range of motion.

Short version
-Try doing a lot of death-hang
-Try riding with this wrist brace
https://www.homehealthcareshoppe.com/wrist-brace-with-boa?gad_source=1&…

Also, I want to add that I don’t wear the brace just for mx. I wear it often when I work, when I play tennis, when I rock climb, when I do just about anything that involves any movement of my wrist. Hope it helps!

I just had this done a couple months ago it’s been a 10 month battle going to be interesting to see how it handles riding.

How's it feel and function day to day? 

Just got cast off two weeks ago everything is very rigid 

Back in '91 or '92 my Pops and I ran into Ricky Johnson in the pits at the Coliseum, my Pops had a fresh wrist fracture and RJ made a point to talk my Pops out of letting any docs fuse his wrist. He got a second opinion from Dr. Ross Nathan, who fixed his wrist, without having to fuse it. Fast forward to 2001, I had a serious OTB wreck at Elsinore, and ended up dislocating my right wrist, and had fractured multiple wrist and hand bones. The EMT's rushed me off to some hospital in Wildomar and the doc called my folks and told them he was planning to immediately fuse my wrist!! Thankfully my Pops raced out there, gave that doc a piece of his mind hand took me to be seen by Dr. Nathan. A couple surgeries later, including a bone graft from my left hip, multiple pins and a plate with 6 screws, I've still have pretty decent range of motion in my wrist, with some stiffness in a couple of fingers, but I'll take it. Very thankful that RJ took the time to talk to my Pops, otherwise we'd probably both have fused wrists!