Steve Kaufman encourages practicing playing, making all the standard "easy" chords, i. e. the ones you can make with 3 fingers, with the middle, ring, and pinky, leaving the index out of it. The idea is that when you get good at it, you can play anywhere on the neck, since you can use the index to hold down the string or strings that would be open in first position.

I've never tried it, but it would be something to mess with while you're healing.

Just a thought FWIW.

P.