Rest and Recovery

A little health update, I haven’t updated my blog since that brief post I made regarding a dream that centered around a character from a Netflix series I used to watch.

One of the things I have learned is that when I go to see multiple people in my care, they all have different opinions. While my doctor believes that I bruised a nerve in my left thumb, my physiotherapist thinks what happened was I hurt my hand on something that somehow bruised the tendon in my thumb.

I always thought it was an incoming repetitive stress injury from all the gaming and typing I do on my computer for hours on my days off from work, plus the days at work where I do a bunch of repetitive tasks. Hurting my hand on whatever surface must have irritated the tendon the most. If it really was tendonitis from repetitive activities, then it would have started long ago.

Unfortunately, tendons can take weeks to heal because they get very little blood supply.

For a while, I believed it to also be the nerve because I also was experiencing some nerve pain, but when it subsided, I realized that it wasn’t entirely the nerve that was bruised, it was reacting to my stress and wearing my splint too tight.

The only thing that has really worked for me is the hand exercises that I use from physio and it can take weeks for results to show. As I type this, I have finally started to see results as the tendon heals and my hands and thumbs are much stronger than a few weeks ago because of the consistency I have stuck to with my exercises.

Having abstained from some gaming, especially games with a controller, helped as well, as much as I didn’t want to do it. The moment I saw my strength was returning and I was having less inflammation and flare-ups this week, I began to ease back into my hobbies. Last night I played some more Horizon Zero Dawn and had no pain. At work, I only had to put my splint on once. So things are looking up from now on. I will keep doing the exercises because I want my hands to stay strong for my job and my hobbies going forward.

If there’s another thing I’ve learned upon turning 30 this month, it’s that I can still do what I love to do, but there will be times when depending on what it is, my body will need to be nurtured if I want to keep doing it without pain. So that means exercises, breaks if necessary, you know the drill. I do need to exercise more anyway.

I’m not the type of person who goes to the gym though. I find my own ways at home. I only wish I didn’t stress so much about the pain in my thumb when it started as it began to annoy my family a lot. It was especially common when I started doing the exercises from physio and didn’t see results immediately, I had no patience.

I mean, it was just my thumb, but it can be difficult because we do a lot of things with our hands and would prefer that they be completely functional, no matter what we like to do. I have to remind myself that every day is a step toward recovery.

Next week I will be going for my last session of physio and the therapist believes I won’t need another after that. Physio also helped me last year when I was having some knee pain as well.

So, I’m doing better, starting to do my job without having to be too cautious and easing back into gaming. It’s progress and going forward, like I said, I will keep doing these exercises so I don’t get a real RSI or something like carpal tunnel.

Have you had a similar experience? How did you cope with it?

👽Emily