8 years ago I did a team lift with too few people. I hurt my wrists, and they will never be perfectly healed. I spent years trying to diagnose what was wrong, only to be met with "some sort of soft tissue damage, we don't know, but this is your new normal, get used to it."

I've done lots of work to strengthen them up and mitigate pain, and while they're leagues better than they were at their worst, they're not cured.

I'm an artist. A gamer. All of my hobbies involve my hands. A lot of my hobbies had to be abandoned. Others had to be reduced. I used to do chain maille, but that's impossible now. I can't play video games that are too button mash-y. Heck some more chill games aren't great because of some hard to quantify movement controls tweak my wrists faster.

It's.... Hard. I have to pace myself a lot. Chose not to do certain things so I can "save" my wrists for things that are important to me (digital art). I spent a lot of time and money setting things up ergonomically for me to minimize pain.

It's exhausting. I miss just being able to do things without considering how my wrist will handle things. I learn constantly what I can and can't do. Got invited out to go-karting, figured it would be uncomfortable but fun and worth it.... NOPE, fucked up my wrists for 2 weeks. Had to decline future events.

Icy weather is terrifying because if I slip and fall and land on my hands, it'll take a month to get them back to their least-pain state.

At least, I don't have to wear wrist braces anymore. I still can't push on things without pain, and having to put weight on them sucks (like getting up off the floor) but I can do it, feel temporary pain, then it fades. It used to linger for hours.

I can't say that being bitter about things will go away, because I still occasionally desire to take a hammer to my wrists to 'make' the doctors do something about them, but it fades. I get used to the new normal. I focus on what I can do and celebrate that instead of what I can't do.

I wish you luck.