CTS
by GinafishCTS…a new acronym for my life.
Yuck!
About three weeks ago, I smashed my right thumb something horrible inbetween a couple of swinging doors. I smashed it well enough that my thumb nail has all sorts of pretty colors on top of it, which has brought out the girl in me, the one screaming for thick dark nail polish. 
So the next couple of days, the thumb was incredibly sore, sore enough that I was online for about 15 minutes, while I was home for hours and hours and hours. Which is totally unlike me.
Then my thumb felt a little better and the next day I was online back at Isara, facebook, the newspaper websites, etc. A couple of hours of clicking and my wrist was sore and someone was stabbing knives into my forearm. I asked my mother-in-law about it since she is a physical therapists assistant. She said it sound like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and gave me her brace to wear overnight.
The next day, my wrist felt better, but I know my m-i-l wears her brace quite a bit, and so I figured I could spare $15 or so to buy a brace for myself. So off to Wally World and I bought a CTS brace.
I just wore it a couple of times while typing on the computer, and it was really annoying not to move my wrist. But afterwards, my wrist didn’t ache. So I reasoned that probably what happened was when I smashed my thumb, the nerve damage was taking it’s time traveling up my arm. First the thumb, then the wrist, then my shoulder. Just a little tinge.
So I stopped wearing the brace while typing, and went about my normal routine.
Well…sort of normal. It’s really been quite busy with activities lately like school parties, shopping, and pet sitting. So my computer time has been limited. Until Christmas Eve, then I got in a couple of good hours of surfing. WooHOoO!
Christmas Eve, we took the kids, a thermos of hot chocolate, a cup of soy nog for myself, blankets, some flashlights, and headed off to look at Christmas lights. My hubby is hot natured, so after a bit of having the air conditioner on, while it’s 53 degrees outside, the kids and I bundle up with our blankets.
I’m not aware of what I normally do with my hands while being a passenger, but with them trapped under the blanket, they sought each other out, and I tried to rub some warmth and feeling back into them. And that’s when I noticed.
“Why does my right hand feel so weird?” I thought.
I felt the left hand. It felt normal. Meanwhile the right hand felt bloated and puffy, like someone had injected a bunch of sponge under the skin between my thumb and first finger. I even had my husband look at when we got home, and under the light, I realized my hand was swollen twice its’ normal size in between my thumb and first finger.
“I don’t even want to know why as long as it doesn’t hurt,” I thought to myself. I think alot to myself. 
I couldn’t help myself though. I asked my m-i-l about it when we went to her house for Christmas. She smiled and said, “I told you it’s carpal tunnel syndrome, you are going to have to start sleeping with your brace and wearing it whenever you type at the computer”.
ACK!!! Smashed fingers with nerve damage resolve themselves over time, CTS, doesn’t. That sucks! I hop on the computer for five minutes here, ten there, one hour here, 2 hours at nap time. Some days, all added up, it’s probably about 4 hours. But it’s in spurts, so that’s a lot of putting the brace on and off, on and off. Not to mention, you HAVE to take it off to use the restroom.
I guess the good news is that I’ve caught onto it before it really bothers me 24/7. Right now, I can handle it, and if I wear my brace regularly, it might not ever become a real force of nature. I, for one, would not like to have surgery for CTS since I know lots of people who have. Some happy about it, some not.
So now my new not posting excuse is “can’t post, wrist hurts, kids ran off with the brace.” Or…”sorry, my cts has affected my brain today, it’s sore too”. 
So if you’ve got any helpful hints about CTS, let me have em. All the preventative stuff I can do at this point will still help.
