This week has largely been about my hand/finger joints. While still weak/sore, they’ve improved overall from the overwork I abused them with whilst house moving, but my thumbs have decided to take a turn for the worse…right hand more than the left, but both are problematic. They ‘pop’ with every little motion - lifting, twisting doorknobs, using knives to cut meat for dinner, using a pen to write, pressing button-handles to open car doors, etc. Night before last, I woke up in the middle of the night and while turning over to a new position, my right thumb ‘popped’ painfully. A couple seconds later, I realized I couldn’t bend my thumb anymore. At all. That sucked. So I lay in bed, gritting my teeth whilst pulling on the thumb in multiple directions until it finally popped a second time and I could bend it again. That was fun!

Now … I’m not hand-crippled with hot/swollen joints or in constant pain. It’s a bending and extension-motion triggered issue. My paranoia tho, is that this is the beginning of a degenerative process that will lead to more constant joint trouble. Sudden damage to joints (that viral fever I had last year) can lead to such (damage induced arthritis).

Maybe my partial double-jointedness contributes to it somewhat too, since my fingers naturally ‘bend over backwards’ with any normal hand movements. I don’t mean stuff like purposely bending your thumb behind your hand to gross out your friends - I don’t try to make my joints ‘bend over backwards’, they just do. I once asked hubby if he could make his hand/fingers bend back the way mine do when, say, just raised in a “hello” greeting, and he couldn’t. His finger joints - particularly the ones attached to the actual hand - won’t bend backwards enough.

So to combat all this I’ve bought those little finger splints. I bought that gauze tape that sticks only to itself - a very nice invention, btw - and wrapped it around my hands/thumbs/wrists in large quantities. I sleep with my hands wrapped in the stuff. It does help prevent my fingers from moving ‘over backwards’ like they want to naturally do, but as soon as I take it off, pop pop pop. Unfortunately, I can’t make my joints not do the extra backward bending stuff since that’s just the way my joints work. So I guess I’ll be wrapping my hands for a while, while doing mild finger/hand exercises in the hopes that they’ll help.

It kinda makes me look like a mummy-in-training. Or, if I was a sports nut (I’m not) I suppose one might say “like a boxer-in-training”, instead.