On Hands, Tendonitis, Ganglion Cysts, Radial Fraying
For over a decade the pain in my hands, wrist and arm has been torturing me slowly. Fingers aching, shoulder screaming in pain. I figure it’s carpal tunnel. It’s tendonitis. It’s whatever it was that my grandmother would complain about toward the end of her life. I’d visit her home and hold her hands and she would tell me “these hands, they hurt me so much.” I felt so futile and small.
I still feel that way, sometimes. In regards to my own health, I never learned to advocate for myself the way I recommend to everyone else. In a practice of self-love, I finally made an appointment to address this suspicious little mass that I suddenly noticed one evening while washing dishes. There it was, a big and hard static lump. Is this what has been causing so much pain all these years? Against the wish of every doctor I went the googling route to find out what the hell this was. Ganglion Cyst, or Carpal Boss. The bump moves and snaps around with every little movement. Pouring water into a glass, typing, cooking, washing dishes, exercising— everything. A constant uncomfortable reminder that something is wrong. Something is swollen and uncomfortable. I continue to wear a hand guard to sleep and during work but it doesn’t make much of a difference. The pain persists.
I finally see the Orthopedic specialist. He’s a surgeon. He’s insisting the cyst is not the reason for my pain but doesn’t seem to care what is because he’s focused on what brought me in, this silly little cyst. “It’s in an unusual location. I can’t be sure what it is,” he says. One X-Ray, One full body MRI (apparently just the hand would be too uncomfortable for the full duration of the scan), four $50 co-pays, $400 for the scan and finally a confirmation. Yes, it’s exactly what I thought it was. “So what do you want to do?” Surgery or a needle aspiration. He explains, surgery is invasive and recovery is slow. The cyst will be gone, but there are some risks associated with the procedure. With a needle aspiration, there is much less risk to my dominant hand, nerves in tact, and recovery is about a week, but there’s a strong chance it will return. Something between a 60-90% chance of reoccurrence.
I’m not bold enough and I don’t have the time to wait for such a recovery. I opt for the aspiration. A $90 co-pay, and $275 later the cyst was removed by a very busy and quiet doctor and two nurses, one which was being trained. They sat me in a chair next to a patient bed and adjusted my arm over a pillow before starting the procedure. The aspiration would be ultrasound guided, so as the doctor is shoving a gigantic needle into my hand, the nurse was guiding the ultrasound on the same spot. I focused on fixing my eyes on anything else during the procedure. It was a horrendous sensation. By the time it was over I just kept hoping I wouldn’t be like the case of someone else that had an aspiration on their ganglion cyst, and it returned on his walk back to the car outside the lab. For the next few days I was careful not to overuse my hand or force too much on myself.
But in only 10 days it would come back in just the same spot, almost the exact same size. And the pain persists.
