telophase | (no subject)

I have this thing about mixing my BPAL reviews with other types of posts; I think it's my organizational librarian database person coming out and refusing to let me mix subject matter, so you get to deal with it. :D

In interesting medical news: my mother has officially been diagnosed with Dupuytren's contracture. Not life-threatening or anything by any means, but interesting - it's when bands of tissue in your hand thicken and pull fingers in. They won't do surgery unless the contracture gets beyond a certain point, because hand trauma is one of the things they think may cause it, and it will recur after surgery anyway. Seems to occur almost exclusively in people of northish European extraction: Germany, Scandinavia, the UK - the doctor apparently thought there was a major hotbed of it in Ireland. :) We're English/Scots/German/French, so that's not surprising.

Seems to have a strong genetic component, though, so I'll now be obsessively poking at my hand for the rest of my life.

And, yay, I've got hotel-room space at AnimeFest for Saturday and Sunday nights (thank you

yankeerose69!); now to find Friday accomodation. I may just splurge on that myself - three nights was a little high, but one night is probably doable. There's just no way I'm commuting from Fort Worth (although if I have another look at my credit-card bill, commuting may seem quite sensible. XD)

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Can your Mom get physical therapy for it, to stretch the tissue or something?

Seems to have a strong genetic component, though, so I'll now be obsessively poking at my hand for the rest of my life.

Well, that will help you identify with one of our characters...

Yeah, I was just going to voice what

rachelmanija said above. That might encourage you to look into hand exercises and such as well to keep your fingers limber. Might want to discuss that with your mother's physician.

That's a scary thought, though! Losing dexterity. yikes!

Apparently some therapy will help slow it a bit, and some steroid injections will help with the pain once it gets to that point. After that, surgery basically winds the clock back a bit, but it may never get to that point. It's just One Of Those Things.

I'll be sure to let you know what it's like. XD (Mom's got a bit of carpal tunnel issues in that hand, too, so she's ferreted out my old wrist brace to wear when she's not using that hand.)

I should probably do hand exercises more - I need to remember to stretch my wrists gently before starting in a day of typing, and I periodiclaly get some sort of muscle cramp or something in random fingers, most likely due to mouse/trackball use (not a symptom of Mom's thing, where the pain is all in the palm). Luckily Mom's thing mostly affects the last two fingers, and not the first two, so my drawing fingers appear to be mostly safe...

Eep. My sympathies to your mother. Hand damage is frustrating and scary.

(I do that posting thing, too--I want everything to fit into a neat category, and I'll make multiple posts so things don't overlap.)

Thanks. :)

Sympathies--I hope at least the progression will be very slow.

Thanks. It should be - Mom hadn't even really noticed much of it: she went in to the doctor for wrist and shoulder repetitive-stress problems (from weaving), and was nonplussed when he ignored them for this and sent her to a plastic surgeon for consultation. XD

Sorry to hear that. Losing dexterity is not fun. Hope she's okay and that it pregresses very slowly.

Yeah, she's fine - she really hadn't noticed it before going in for her carpal-tunnel symptoms, and is more concerned with the RSI in the shoulder, since that's affecting her weaving right at the moment. :) Thanks!