So I sustained a wrist injury about 5 weeks ago while climbing. I caught my ring and middle finger on a hold while falling and immediate heard a pop in the base of my hand. I had a lot of pain initially, but it went away over the course of the next few days.
I kept climbing with no limitations in strength and just a minor pain/irritation on the ulnar side of my wrist. Most sessions I felt nothing. I continued to increase my volume until one day my whole hand was extremely sore and swollen and my ulnar started to protrude more from the back of my wrist.
I saw the hand ortho and all of my results were negative. He said that I had no DRUJ instability or anything that would suggest surgery, so he told me 4 weeks of "taking it easy". He made ZERO comment on my ulna despite the fact that is it clearly more dorsally located than the one on my other arm. No confirmation of TFCC tear since MRA would not change the course of my treatment, which makes perfect sense.
What I'm wondering is whether anyone has any anecdotes of their ulna moving around in their wrist and whether you needed treatment for that or not.
I apologize that this is not a first hand account, but this seems to match almost exactly what my wife is dealing with right now. Thinks she hurt it during a slip on a difficult approach, but seemed to be no big deal. Time and climbing volume (months later) seemed to make the wrist/hand get really sore kind of out of nowhere. The pain increased over a few weeks as did the size of the ulnar head (could be calling it the wrong thing) at the wrist. She convinced the doctor to get an MRI and the result was that it was ‘nothing’ and would go away. It doesn’t sound like he mentioned or was concerned with the bone being much bigger than on the other wrist. He said it’ll just go away in a little while. If I got major parts of this wrong, I’ll clarify, but it was interesting to see a very similar description in your post. Good luck.
Thanks for sharing that Zach! I’m sorry to hear about your wife’s injury..... also how frustrating it must be to not get a clear answer from the MRI. May I ask if they got an MRI with dye (MR arthroplasty) and whether they ruled out TFCC?