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Trigger Finger, a Ganglion Cyst, and Two Rubber Balls |
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Hands On |
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Newberry's, in I'd been having
some trouble with my left hand. A chiropractor friend of mine told me I
was developing a trigger finger, and he was correct. Whenever I curled
my hand, my ring finger locked in the "down" position. It was
especially disturbing to me because both my mother and father have had
surgery for trigger fingers, in my Dad's case, nine such operations. Oh,
great, I thought. My turn now, at age 30, in graduate school. But sitting through
a three-hour evening statistics class can make anyone try anything. Math
and I are not especially good friends. No doubt one of the several factors
that kept me from getting into medical school was my "D" in
freshman calculus. To say that I worked even for that grade would be
accurate enough, although I did not understand the work that I did. So there I was in
statistics, front row center, successfully trying to stay awake. I have
developed a system to do so. First, sit close to the instructor. His
proximity and your self-consciousness about it will combine to keep the
adrenaline flowing. Second, ask a question every 20 minutes, whether you
give a rap about the subject or not. Framing the question in your mind
will take time and getting up the nerve to voice it and waiting for the right
moment will keep your attention. Asking the question itself gets you
another rush of epinephrine, which will keep your heart rate up for at least
ten minutes more. As you come down from the participatory rush, you can begin
thinking of your next question, and start the process over again.
Incidental to all of this is the fact that you might also get a higher grade,
being pegged by the lecturer as a "genuinely interested" student. No
one has to know the truth. Of course, you also
might learn something. One evening, my
hand was aching and locking so that I wiggled and squirmed such that class
members probably thought I had to go to the bathroom. I flexed my hand,
stretching and curling it. I cracked my knuckles (silently) and bent my
wrist. Hmm. It all felt a bit better, but nothing
remarkable. This went on sporadically, stimulated by the dullness of
standard deviations, two-tailed T-tests, and chi squares. Then I grabbed my
wrist with my other hand, and turned it forth and back a bit. Repeat,
opposite hands. I felt a pull, then a clunk, in my wrist. I grabbed
a thicker part of my arm, closed my hand and curled my fingers around it, and
it happened again. By now I'd nearly
lost track of the lecture, just like everybody else, but for a different
reason. I left off my experimenting and hastened back to notes and
question-forming. So back to
Newberry's, the five-and-ten, remember? It was a Friday evening, about
5:30. I was squeaking my way around the store, bargain hunting. By
the cash registers, there were 8-track tapes for sale, two for a buck. In a
corner shelf, way up the wall, were 8-track players for $29.95. At this
time, late 1980's, 8-tracks were as rare as coelacanths, those prehistoric
living-fossil fish that southern hemisphere native fishermen pull in from
time to time. "10,000 Items
for Under a Dollar!" proclaimed Newberry's garish chartreuse
signs. Probably. Down one shop-worn, war-torn, metal shelved
isle, there were some three-inch diameter hard rubber balls. They were
probably designed for playing fetch with your favorite medium sized
dog. They were solid rubber, unpainted, and three for a dollar. I
summoned up unknown instincts, took the plunge, and bought two. I still had the
trigger finger problem. And, I had pocketed the experience from statistics
class that grabbing something, curling my hand and stretching my fingers got
me a clunk in the wrist and some relief. Holding one of the balls in my
hand, I began to do the same procedure. I found that if I grabbed the ball
with my fingers only (no thumb) I could roll the ball from finger tips to my
wrist, bending my hand more and more as I went. Furthermore, if I braced
my wrist with the other hand, I could choose where the hand and wrist
actually bent and stretched the most. The tangible rewards were
straightforward: a clunk in the wrist and relief in the hand. There are over 50
bones between your two hands. That's about one quarter of all the bones
in your body. Your wrist is made up of many small bones, which a
complicated robotic system of nerves, blood vessels, ligaments and tendons
must pass by or through. The idea of physiotherapy for carpal tunnel
syndrome and other repetitive motion disorders is hardly new, but such an
approach for trigger fingers was never offered to anyone I've ever met. Bottom line was
that it was completely successful. Over a period of not more than three
weeks at most, all the triggering went away. No pain, soreness or
stiffness. No locking. Just a 34 cent (plus tax) ball from
Newberry's, used a couple of times a day.
Newberry's has
since gone out of business, but there's more. During my once-a- decade
physical, I asked my doctor about a lump on my wrist. It was small and
hard, on the outside wrist two inches south of my thumb. "Ganglion cyst," he said. "What should I
do about it?" I asked. "Well, if this
were the old days, I'd go get the biggest, thickest medical text book I could
find." I was in the process of figuring it to be such an uncommon
condition that he'd have to look it up.
"Then,"
my trusted doctor added without cracking a smile, "I'd have placed your
hand on the table and whacked your wrist with the book as hard as I
could." I thought he was
kidding, but he wasn't. "That was the
time-honored, old-fashioned way to get rid of a lump like that," he
concluded. "Would you like a referral to a surgeon?" Comparing my
choices did not take me long. "Yes," I
said. Prima dona doctors
are here to stay, and I met yet another one after a very long wait in a very
well decorated, and very crowded, series of waiting rooms. "HELLO!"
boomed the great man with the million-dollar smile, upon entering the
examination booth. He introduced himself with flourish. He was not
just a surgeon, but a surgeon specializing specifically in hands. I wondered:
Could all of those people out there really been needing hand surgery?
Were there that many people in the state who did? Those were some of
my mental questions, but the one I was actually about to ask was this: What
are you going to do? He beat me to it,
immediately telling me how he would set out my arm like this, use an
anesthetic like so and cut off the blood supply here, and open an incision there.
More details followed, which made me squeamish. "What will
happen if I don't choose to have the surgery?" I said. "It might get
worse; it probably won't get better," he answered. I was instructed to
stop and schedule a date for surgery on my way out with one of a pack of
office assistants, but I kept right on walking. I wasn't sure I wanted
to go through all of that for such a non-life-threatening condition as a
wrist lump. I continued to use
my exercise ball a few times a week to keep any chance of the trigger finger
from returning. Time passed. One day I noticed
that the wrist lump was gone. Nobody hit me with Gray's Anatomy, and
nobody operated, either. The lump has never returned, no it never
returned, and its fate is still unlearned.
Newberry's saved my
insurance company a pile of money, saved me two surgeries, and I get to keep
the balls. Total cost of my therapy: 67 cents. Plus
tax.
VITAMIN B6
FOR CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME Nancy
Watson Dean (age 90-plus) of “I have just experienced
such an amazing relief from this condition, which came upon me about a year
ago, in the shape of hands tingling and hurting more often as time went on. I
presently realized it was carpal tunnel, when shooting pains hit both hands. “I knew Vitamin B-6 would
help, and it did, but only a little. So remembering a paper by the Texas
doctor, John Marion Ellis, M.D., who said that large amounts didn't seem to
bother him in any way, I pulled out all the stops and increased it to 200
milligrams 4 times daily. I also stopped eating salt. The
carpal tunnel disappeared. “I am thrilled, out of pain,
and the hands are growing stronger by the hour. “This is a very widespread
ailment. Perhaps the maintenance and attacks of the condition are entirely
individual: just find the amount that 'cures' you. Wouldn't the medics hate
that idea!” Copyright
C 2004 and prior years Andrew W. Saul. Revised and copyright 2019. Andrew Saul is the author of the books FIRE
YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently Healthy (reader reviews at
http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html
) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html
)
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AN IMPORTANT NOTE: This page is not in any way offered as prescription, diagnosis nor treatment for any disease, illness, infirmity or physical condition. Any form of self-treatment or alternative health program necessarily must involve an individual's acceptance of some risk, and no one should assume otherwise. Persons needing medical care should obtain it from a physician. Consult your doctor before making any health decision. Neither the author nor the webmaster has authorized the use of their names or the use of any material contained within in connection with the sale, promotion or advertising of any product or apparatus. Single-copy reproduction for individual, non-commercial use is permitted providing no alterations of content are made, and credit is given. |
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