Kat with a K

Hope your hand feels better after the sock sanity check!

Uh oh. I've got right hand problems right now too, that I'm masking with ibuprofen, a thumb/wrist brace and smaller needle on my lace shawl. I really, really, really don't want it to be carpal tunnel because the surgery they do to fix it scares the bejeebies out of me.

Skipped a needle? LOL.

I had a lot of pain at the base of my right thumb last year, and wore a splint for a long time, and finally went in for an eval with The Hand Guy, who looked at the xrays and at my hand and shrugged.....

Luckily the exercises the occupational therapist gave me seemed to do the trick.

They are all range-of-motion. Don't push to the point of pain (I couldn't do some of the exercises at first), repeat each exercise 20 times.

I was told to start with my hand in comfortably hot water (note that this was a long time after it started to hurt, so I was past any potential icing stage).

1) stretch thumb away from hand (think "hand flat on table, stretch all digits parallel to the
table). Stretch/relax, repeat 20.

2) touch tip of thumb to tip of each finger on the same hand (I finish that one with another stretch as in 1).

3) lay your thumb along the base of the fingers of the same hand, where the fingers join the hand. Only the end joint of my thumb actually fits there, but I'm trying to get my thumb nestled in there. Again I finish with a stretch.

4) make circles with the thumb, as big as possible. 20 in each direction

5) (this one I couldn't do for a long time, ymmv) again think "hand flat on table", and lift thumb into the air as high as possible. Relax, repeat...

Now I do these any time I feel a twinge, and I mean to do them every day (and do, almost every day). Of course every hand is different, andt there are a million different problems, but -- seems pretty benign.

ps -- I read somewhere, when I was reading about this, that ibuprofen makes tendon injuries take longer to heal. Sigh.

Might I recommend a beer to, um, help your hand relax? I'm bringing those books in for you tonight-I'll put them in your mailbox.