DENVER (AP) -Colorado Rockies pitcher Kip Wells is optimistic he can be back within a month after recently undergoing surgery to remove blood clots in his pitching hand.
“I think I can be,” Wells said with a grin as he showed up in the clubhouse Monday.
Wells had a three-inch scar on the inside of his upper right arm after Dr. Robert Thompson removed clots from his wrist by traveling down an artery with a wire during a four-hour procedure at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis on May 6.
The 31-year-old Wells said it beat the alternative – having to slice open his hand.
“If it got to where he couldn’t get the clot out, he was going to cut my hand open and take it out,” Wells said.
He noticed something wasn’t feeling right with his hand as he got ready to enter a game at San Francisco on April 28.
“By the time I warmed up and went into the game, I was losing feeling,” Wells said. “You lose circulation, then you lose some feeling, then you lose some motor skill. Those steps took place and by the time I was a couple pitches into the outing – when they came out to talk to me – I’m like, ‘Look, I can’t feel my hand.”’
Wells was placed on the 15-day disabled list retroactive to April 29. He was 1-1 with a 2.29 ERA in 10 games, including one start.
He’s hoping to begin playing catch next week.
“Other than having a wound and an artery that’s been tampered with, coupled with the fact I haven’t thrown in several weeks, that’s all I’m really forced to come back from,” said Wells, who’s currently taking blood thinners for the clot. “Most of the people that have this problem are not 30-year-olds. They’re older folks and it’s in their legs.”
Wells had a blocked artery in his right arm in 2006, which had to be replaced by a vein taken from his leg.
His doctors checked out that area as well during the procedure.
“When he got done with the wrist, he turned around and went back upstream and looked at the artery in my arm with dye, to see if it’s collapsed to where it’s causing the problem,” Wells said. “It wasn’t.”
As Wells made his way onto the field before the game Monday against the San Francisco Giants, manager Clint Hurdle came up and put his arm around him.
“It’s great to have him back,” Hurdle said. “I told him he had carte blanche to take however long he needed to get back. … We’ll take him when we can get him.”
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