I had an ulnar nerve inflammation for a couple of months. I say had, because last weekend I suddenly noticed that the pain had left almost completely. The ironic part was that this happened just as I was finally being recommended to a hand specialist by the Dr. I’d been seeing. After a month of physical therapy, ergonomic evaluation of my desktop, new keyboard, automatically timed work-breaks from the computer, I’d shown little progress beyond the slight improvment in the first week. I’d read JWZ’s great writeup and while I certainly agree that treating the initial pain as serious, I had ignored that advice for long enough that it developed into a real problem.
And in the end, what finally fixed it, convinced my forearm to loosen up and the ulnar nerve to settle down? Basketball. Lots of basketball. The last time before this that I had to go to a doctor it was because I was playing basketball and ended up breaking my foot. After a lot of hassle, x-rays, and wasted time sitting in waiting rooms, I was told, “yup, your foot’s broken. Umm, don’t walk on it if it hurts.” The worst part was we ended up paying for more of the processes out of pocket than we were supposed to because they screwed up our insurance information. So I wasn’t particularly impressed with the medical community and vowed to not waste my time again.
I guess I didn’t learn my lesson. Of course, it was terrifying not being able to type. It’s rather important to my two jobs, so I was in real trouble if I never got back to functionality, so I needed all the advice I could get. In the end though, it looks like a little healthy exercise was all I needed.
Furthering the irony of the situation, I sprained my ankle playing ball. I’ve been playing on it anyway, because it’s a pretty light sprain and I’d rather limp a tiny bit than not be able to type, but I will wear an ankle brace. What I’m not going to do is see a doctor about it unless it doesn’t heal on its own after I take my own care of it.
Doctors can really mess up. Mine had me on the wrong prescription for my type of diabetes. On the other hand, in the case of having a real problem I was glad they were there when I first got it…
Anyway, just my lesson from that experience, completely different from yours. I wanted to put a comment up letting you know also that I am actually in Japan now. Osaka.
Left by Evan on April 10th, 2007