I have it in BOTH wrists, (pretty bad). It was so bad in the RIGHT wrist about eight years ago, I snapped the tendon that pulls the thumb open from the hand and had to have that surgically reconnected. Now, have no feeling in my first and second fingers of the LEFT hand, and not Much feeling in that thumb and am continually dropping things from that hand without even knowing I've dropped it. I have the wrist braces for Both wrists, but since I'm not driving a truck anymore, I don't use them much, (but they did help during that time).
I know quite a few folks that have had the surgery, and the results range from "Absolutely fantastic", to "Not worth it". It seems that some Surgeons have a lot better and More Consistent results than others, BUT even with the Best Surgeons, the results seem to vary somewhat from patient to patient.
I, like you Don, have put off doing the surgery as long as I can, and now it will have to wait til after I do the knee replacement thing before I even think about that surgery.
Vibration, hammering, and a few other activities seem to irritate the problems and only resting the wrists from activity seems to help, AND I sometimes wear the wrist braces for a few days to get things back to where they were. You might want to get one for each of your wrists and try them to see if they help, specially when you are doing activities that really irritate the situation. Seems like they only cost about $17 each, (the last time I bought one) and are available at most medical supply stores.
If you do find any alternate method that helps, please post it, because being diabetic, I really don't want to do ANY Surgery that is not Absolutely necessary.