Thirtysomething

Tingle

People, my hand is messed up. Several weeks ago, I literally but not intentionally punched my nightstand while putting freshly washed sheets on the bed. My knuckle, pinky and ring fingers started to swell up immediately. Ron took one look at it and said, "You broke your hand." I, of course, laughed in his face because honestly, who the hell does he think he is? My hand didn't really hurt, which was strange. I mean, it would hurt if I broke it, right? I've never broken anything before, but I assume that usually hurts. Ron shrugged his shoulders and repeated that I probably broke it or at the very least did some nerve damage. I put ice on it and called it a night.

Over the next couple of days, my hand turned all sorts of pretty colors. Still, it didn't really hurt and I had full range of motion in all my fingers. However, I started to notice a tingling in my hand up through my elbow. A day or so after that, something new started. It wasn't a pain in my hand so much as it was a dull ache. Now since then, on and off, there is tingling and these weird aches. I've complained to Ron about the tingling. "That's not good," he said, "Nerve damage. Does it shoot up to your elbow?" Why yes, yes it does. He really tried not to have a "told-you-so" look on his face.

Still, I did nothing. Finally, today, I started Googling "broken hand". Of course, OF COURSE, tingling is a symptom of a broken hand. What I can't decipher is whether it's normal to not have felt any real pain. Ron claimed that there are some tiny bones in your hand that might not affect the normal range of motion or that something might just be misaligned now and is pressing on a nerve. Anyway, so it's been like 3 weeks now since this happened and I'm just now getting around to freaking out about it. Only because the websites I found lead me to believe that if I have nerve damage and it goes untreated, my hand will basically fall off.

So I called my doctor, who of course can't see me until the end of the month. I guess I could go to an emergency room, but this isn't exactly an emergency and frankly, I don't feel like sitting around for 18 hours in the waiting room. And it's probably nothing. It's not even bruised anymore. And it doesn't really hurt. I can just see a ER doctor looking at me, saying "So it's not bruised, it doesn't hurt and this happened 3 weeks ago? Why are you here?" "Because it tingles," I will say. "I am here because of the tingling."

For now, I'm going to do more of nothing.

posted by DJ Heavy D @ 8:38 AM