Hand-some

On Tuesday I went back to hand surgeon. Last time I saw him he was concerned with the variability of my symptoms (I'd just lost and recovered strength in my right tricep), so he had asked me to come back several months later. My arm has stabilised, and it appears that I've had a slight increase in the strength in my fingers. My right wrist is still shot though, with the extensor overactive and the flexor barely working. As such, the surgeon recommended that I have an operation to transfer the tendon from my brachio-radialis to the flexor carpi radialis. This would hopefully stabilise my wrist and let me get more use from my hand.
We talked about the risk involved, particularly around further degeneration of my symptoms. There's little risk of making things worse, as the brachio-radialis isn't used much (I use my biceps for most elbow flexion), and my extensors don't do a lot as it is. Normally the anaesthetist would do a nerve block for this style of operation, but as there's a slight risk of nerve damage from this they'd look to a combination of local and general anaesthetic instead.
I would have to wear a cast for 6 weeks (which precludes driving), and then undergo occupational therapy for about a year, so now I need to talk to the insurance company and my work to get things rolling. Hopefully I can have an operation sometime next year in late February or early March.
I'd really like if this helped me improve doing a few standard things like pulling my phone out of my pocket and doing up buttons, but my ideal situation would be that it lets me get back to playing touch footy with my mates - I played for years with dud fingers, so I'm pretty confident that if my wrist improves I'll be able to catch, pass and pick a ball up well enough to play.

Location

It's been a while between posts as life has been pretty hectic. I've been travelling a lot for work, and have just moved in with my beautiful girlfriend. Unfortunately, I think I overdid it a bit. I tried to do to much packing and moving on my own, and this combined with the travel meant I went through a period where I was stressed, exhausted and disappointed in my ability to do more for myself.
Moving things really bought home for me how limited my ability to grasp and carry things has become. Boxes that should have been easy to carry were instead awkward burdens, lots of things got dropped and my hand and arm would quickly tire, further reducing my ability to carry anything. On top of this, I was finding that I was wearing out very quickly. Carrying a few loads of things from the car would require a rest; one night I had to lay down for half an hour after unpacking some books.
To make matters worse, despite knowing I (desperately) needed help some part of my male brain was still reluctant to do so, despite driving myself into dizzy spells and feeling like I was going to collapse.

Moving has also made me consider my location, and how there must be other sufferers of Syringomyelia nearby. Now that I'm living in Sydney, I'd expect there to be 300-350 other sufferers nearby (assuming an 8 in 100,000 incidence rate). In Wollongong (where I moved from), I could expect somewhere between 15 and 30. None of them seem to have any form of footprint on the web though - searching on Syringomyelia and Sydney (or Wollongong) and refining terms doesn't seem to yield any results. I wonder if there is anyone in Sydney (or Wollongong for that matter) discussing their Syringomyelia online?

Finally, I'm off to the hand surgeon again next Tuesday. It'll be interesting to see what he says. At the moment I'm a bit pessimistic that he can help, but will try and turn that around over the next few days.