Thumb report

[lydy]

They hurt. All day, now. And much more when I'm asleep, and reach to adjust the covers and bend them just wrong. I make piteous, barking noises when that happens.

It probably is the crochet. I've been watching my hands when I crochet, and while the hand position is very different between the right and left hand, both wrists twitch in time together as I move the yarn to catch it about the hook, and then pull it through the work, then catch the yarn again. That movement is pretty symmetrical.

I have a doctor's appointment on Monday. Sigh. I don't know what I'm going to do if she tells me to stop crocheting. That would make me very, very unhappy.

Comments

[susandennis]

I live in dread fear of not being able to knit. I get cramps in my hands that remind me to take special care. I was thinking the other day that I should do more crochet so my hands will have different ways to move and maybe last longer. My fingers (irony recognized) are crossed that the answer is something VERY simple and easily fixable without any crochet sacrifice.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

When I've been off work for a while, I find that my hands will go into extreme pain overnight from splicing wire. When I first get up in the morning, I cannot lift a water pitcher because I am unable to grip. It lasts two or three weeks, until the muscles build up.

You can probably get away with doing less crochet for a while, and build back up to what you're doing now.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping the doctor will have more useful solutions than stopping something you love to do.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

In my experience, doctors NEVER have useful suggestions. They run through a list of doctory fixes ranging from medication to surgery, usually in order of complexity. Then when none of these work they throw up their hands and blame the patient. Sadly, it is usually up to the patient to figure out matters of cause and effect.

[quadong.livejournal.com]

In my experience, they DO have useful suggestions, but they are often buried in in the list that you mention. When I had pain in my foot, the options given me were:

1) Get orthopedics
2) Have us zap your foot with our electro-device regularly
3) Steroid injections
4) Stop tying your shoes so tight
5) Surgery

I ended up doing (1) and (4), but after leaving the orthopod orbit, I realized that (4) would have done it by itself.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Possibly useful:

http://knitfreedom.com/being-a-knitter/top-5-stretches-for-knitting-pain-relief

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'll try some of those. Although 90 seconds is actually a remarkably long time, when you try to count it out. Have you noticed that?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

When I tried it out, I didn't do the whole 90 seconds because I didn't notice it. I view following directions for things which aren't obviously dangerous as an iterative process.

I recommend those stretches partly because they make my hands feel good, but mostly because a *lot* of people have gotten good results from them.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Sadly, sometimes that's the only solution. That's what happened to me with skating. I tried everything I could think of to make it less hard on my back, but finally just had to quit. Sure enough, the pain went away.

But you might be able to do something less drastic. First, try to identify the exact crocheting movement that aggravates your hand or wrist, and see if you can find an alternative movement that doesn't grind those tendons.

Then... stop crocheting until the pain and clicking goes away COMPLETELY, using whatever anti-inflammatory drugs work best for you to help the process along.

Then restart gingerly, using modified technique if you found one or just doing less crocheting at a time. If you feel any discomfort, take anti-inflammatories and stop crocheting until it gets better. Repeat process, even more gingerly. I hate to push over-medication, but if you stop the inflammatory response at the first sign it will be much easier to keep it under control.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

When I was doing a lot of keyboard work and had occasional RSI pain in my wrists and forearms, I found I couldn't crochet because it used too many of the same small muscles and made the ache worse. So I haven't done any large crochet projects for years, but I do find that stretches like the ones nancylebov mentions to be very helpful indeed. Good luck.

[bonz-lizard.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry your thumbs hurt! As a fellow crafter and an arthritis sufferer I can sympathize. When my pain flairs up, I try another craft for a while. There are so many crafts and so little time! I would be happy to share some with you! You could use my tools so as not to have to invest unless you find you like it. There are also other shaped crochet hooks, some with padding, varying the tool may help.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Alas, I'm not really a crafter. I don't have a number of things that I like to do, and the primary joy, for me, is not the finished product. What I love is the tactile, the motion and flow. The result is not incidental, exactly, but it is secondary. Taking up a new craft isn't very attractive Possibly switching to knit instead of crochet, since they have similar pleasures. I love creating cloth and lace, most especially lace. I'm not very visual, which again is odd for a crafter.

[riverrocks.livejournal.com]

It's good to understand what specific movements are causing the problems. But don't let them book you a ticket on the if it hurts don't do it train, especially if crochet is meeting other needs. If the doc doesn't have a good solution right off, ask for another round of OT/PT and then go in with the agenda of 1) how can I do this sustainably and 2) if we can't find that, what do I replace it with? Last year when I was recovering from major surgery to my neck and shoulder and also lymphedema, my PT told me to stop knitting. I countered by pointing out that I needed knitting (or some other kind of hand work) to make it through recovery, but I was willing to negotiate what "knitting" looked like. We ended up modifying my posture, varying the size and type of needle I was using (no fine gage sock knitting for six months) and instituting rest and stretch breaks. I also explored some other crafts. embroidery worked for me, crochet, which I already knew, was harder on my arm than the knitting. It felt good to stand up for myself in a way that also recognized a need for change, and the balance we reached helped speed my recovery because I was less anxious than I would have been without something to do during the fatigue. And now we are awash in garter stitch blankets. If crochet is stressing your hands, maybe you can alternate it with a knitting loom or a peg loom, two very different tools with different hand movements that can both be used to make afghans.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Knitting might be a thing. I like knitting, though I am not as good at it. It doesn't make sense to my mind or my fingers the way crochet does. But it has similar pleasures, the movement of the yarn through the fingers, the slow accretion of cloth, the variations that create texture. Lace, oh but I love lace. I am doubtful that a peg loom would suit, though. As for afghans, they're really almost a side-effect of the thing that I'm doing, not the goal. Hence the need to give them away.

[quility.livejournal.com]

*hugs* lots of sensible ideas here. I hope you find ways to meet all your needs that eliminate your pain. And I hope your doc is a smart one who can help problem solve effectively.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

Sympathies. I gave up knitting because it set off my CTS, but I refuse to give up gardening. For me, stretches mitigate the situation but don't really reverse it. I'm personally thinking about CTS surgery, but we'll see. Other options do exist, including steroid shots; I am sending you wishes for a good resolution.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Does heat or muscle relaxants help?

If so, it's nigh-certainly[1] "not strong enough" rather than "failing connective tissue", and you can get handsprings or those individual-finger hand exercisers now available (that don't squeak in use!) and work on having stronger wrists and fingers. Lots and lots of workplace carpal tunnel is "not strong enough" in some sense or other, and it's surprising how much exercise helps.

[1] nothing, alas, says it can't be both; glucosamine, vitamin D (it is incredibly easy to be deficient in Vitamin D, and this is startlingly bad for you), and a more moderate pace can all help with the connective tissue.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Heat definitely helps. Feels wonderful. I don't have access to muscle relaxants. I'm using aspirin and ibuprofen in hopes that if there's swelling, they will help with that.

I'm trying to pace myself a bit, too. That may or may not be helping, hard to say. Exercises, huh. Bleah. Ok, then/.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Handsprings make a great nervous tick/stress reducer.

Everything's capability tends to be set by the amount of exercise you get; bodies don't build more muscle than you're using. It works better to do something general and a little heavier -- why they tell you to walk briskly, instead of just walk -- because fiddly kinds of handwork like typing[1] or fiber crafts don't seem to trigger the whole "hey, build more muscle here, and make the tendons denser while you're at" feedback.

Aspirin and ibuprofen don't get along, so far as I know; people on low-dose aspirin to reduce their heart disease/stroke risk get told not to use ibuprofen.

It looks like methocarbamol (the muscle relaxant I was thinking of) is prescription-only in Minnesota, which is a shame, but possibly something to ask your doctor about? It's good for "I really overdid that" kinds of muscle pain.

[1] electronic keyboard typing; old style mechanical typewriters sure did.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

There appear to be roughly an infinite number of devices to help with grip strength and one can apparently spend any amount of money on them. Some of them have individual finger springs, some are just grip handles with a spring. Any clue what might be best?

Oh, I am not combining the aspirin and ibuprofen. I am using one or the other, four or more hours apart. If I'm drinking alcohol, I use the aspirin, otherwise I use the ibuprofen.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Hereabouts, the recommended ibuprofen/aspirin spacing -- they're antagonists, ibuprofen will keep aspirin from working -- is more like eight hours than four.

As far as hand exercisers, there's a brand called Gripmaster I like; they come in a range from 5lbs per finger to 11 lbs per finger. They're not (at least not at my local co-op :) particularly expensive. (You only need one, one doesn't have to exercise both hands at the same time.)

Handles-on-a-spring work fine, but they squeak, sometimes in ways that cause irresistible curiosity in felines.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

There is something that doesn't cause irresistible curiosity in felines?