I think/hope this will work. I saw the hand doctor(Jennifer Green, at ProSports Orthopedics) today. She asked some questions, did some poking and bending, and then said yes, it's trigger finger, and asked if I would be okay with a cortisone injection.

So, I have now had a dose of cortisone, apparently a dose low enough not to be relevant as cumulative exposure (having needed steroids for optic neuritis and Bell's palsy, and with the first Tysabri infusion, I wanted to check). It turns out there are medical things I will close my eyes for, and a cortisone injection in my hand is one of them. It hurt while she was doing it (I'd guess 30-45 seconds), enough that I said so and asked if that was normal, or a bad sign, and she told me it's normal.


If this works, I may start feeling better in a couple of days, or it might take a couple of weeks. If I don't notice any effect in a couple of weeks, I can call the hand doctor again and/or call the occupational therapist and get an orthotic made. I asked for, and got, a prescription for the orthotic, so I won't have to go back to Dr. Green if the cortisone doesn't do the job. In the meantime, I should keep icing, and avoid "heavy" gripping with that hand.

The doctor said that if this works, it may solve this problem for good, or I might need another cortisone injection some months or years from now. That's a time-scale I can accept.
bugshaw: (Default)

From: [personal profile] bugshaw


Ooh, useful. I've just started to get that in my right thumb in the last month. Hard to use the tin opener and nervous about the impact on my job...
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