WEll, I'm in for surgery on Friday. I'm a guitarist, and make my living(sparse) that way, so I've had to make an informed guess about how long to leave for recovery before the next gig. I've gambled on a fortnight: to be exact I'll have a gig in 15 days and another the day after that. I'll report back on this. The information contained in this thread has been very interesting, and very gratifying to read of fairly normal hand use after 11 days in one case. Hope I'm down at that end of the spectrum too!