My Hands

I am righthanded; I am so righthanded that it is virtually impossible for me to do anything (other than fret a guitar or support what the right hand is doing) with my left hand. So it is both irritating and bizarre to me that I now have carpal tunnel in both hands. The right I'd known about for some time--last year I had a cool test involving electrodes and my hand twitching like a pithed frog (I love medical procedures and machinery. So sue me) and was diagnosed with real live carpal tunnel which, in my case, was not painful, but caused periods of numbness in my thumb and forefinger. I also have some arthritis developing in my knuckles and the joint of my thumb. What was interesting to me is that, according to the doctor who did the test, it's likely that I curl my hands in my sleep and that's the cause of the CT, rather than the keyboarding I do (this is apparently not uncommon in women of a certain age. Have I mentioned how sick I get of all the things that are not uncommon in women of a certain age? Pfui.) Since, in the last few years, I often wake up in the middle of the night with my whole hand having fallen asleep, this rather confirms his diagnosis. So he sent me off to get a brace to sleep in, and that, over a period of months, cleared things up.

After a while I stopped wearing the brace and the symptoms returned, so I'm back to the brace. And then, this year, my left hand started showing the same symptoms. So I got another brace, and I sleep with both hands ensconced in black velcro, which makes me feel vaguely bionic. Except when, as sometimes happens, I take the braces off in my sleep. And then I wake up with both my hands asleep. The occasional numbness/tingling in the left hand is often significantly worse, and significantly harder to stop, than the right.

As near as I can tell, my body has decided that it can't get me to clench the right hand, it's going make me curl my left twice as hard. My body is a pain in the ass sometimes, I have to say.