Despite donning a wrist brace yesterday lefty continued to misbehave. Cooking an evening meal resulted in a burn on my right arm when lefty decided to reject the plan of holding a saucepan. Using my medical expertise* I studied lefty and the movements that caused more pain. I had a eureka moment when I discovered a lump between the base of my thumb and my wrist. Checking the other wrist revealed no such projection but what did that mean? One of the problems with smashing both wrists is that there is no known ‘good’ one to compare with, had lefty grown a lump or had righty lost one?
Given that lefty was causing the pain and the more painful movements caused a grinding against the lump I concluded it was not desirable. The next question was what to do with the lump? It didn’t hurt to press it but equally it didn’t seem to want to move. Now the engineer in me knows that middle carpal row is held in compression by the other two so perhaps it was just a case of getting the correct angle of attack. Rotating the wrist whilst pressing the lump brought some movement and after a couple of goes I was rewarded with a loud crack.
No more lump, well at least it was smaller. A quick check through the range of rotation revealed that it now hurt more, with the grinding feeling deeper in the joints. This all seemed rather unfair, I had solved the issue after all so why had the pain not stopped? More worryingly how would I get the bone back out if indeed that was the problem?
I did some exercise to work out all of the mechanical noises and then retired for the night. Lefty most definitely disapproved, no matter how I laid I couldn’t stop the pain. In the end I hit a compromise, a very tight bandage and wrist under the pillow numbed it for a while. The problem with this arrangement was that after a short while the pins and needles became more annoying so I had to release the bandage. Whilst this arrangement is not conducive to sleep it does give plenty of opportunity to listen to the ocean.
The pain has eased off a little this morning, obviously this is because my intervention was the right thing to do. Or perhaps it just that my shoulder is aching so much, in protest at sleeping on it, that the wrist doesn’t seem so bad.
I wrote this post mainly for anyone who should catch me sneaking glances at them. It’s ok it’s nothing weird I’m just trying to understand what a wrist should look like!
*or should that be stupidise?
