Trigger Un-Happy

I have been having this weird trouble with my pinky finger. Sometimes, especially in the middle of the night and in the morning, the joint seems to get stuck and then it sort of flips back into place. And it's a disgusting feeling.

A few nights ago, it woke me up. It was around 4am. And maybe because it was around 4am, I started having thoughts of all the worse-case-scenarios of what it could be. I won't go through them all here (I don't want to re-live it and neither do you), but I'll just say, losing the ability to play the guitar was NOT the worst of them. I was moaning and groaning for about and hour. And then, a few hours later, when I was complaining about more poor, weird finger, my husband said, "Why don't you go to the doctor then. In fact take my appointment that I can't make it to today anyway."

As soon as I demonstrated my pinky problem to my doctor he said, "Trigger finger." Some people who have trigger finger actually have their finger get totally stuck in one position. In fact, my doctor said that once he went to a Bruce Springsteen concert and was clapping so much that he woke up the next morning and his finger was stuck. Supposedly it's caused from overuse. So it's either from walking my dogs (gripping their leashes) or playing the guitar. Two things I can't NOT do!! My doctor told me it's when the tendon or ligament (I can't remember which) gets stuck on the bone. EWWWW. I remember my mom had a few bouts with her own case of trigger finger. This is not one of the ways I wanted to be like Mom. I remember mom couldn't bend her finger and then she started wearing these weird looking gloves all the time. It eventually stopped being a big problem for her, but I remember it went on for quite a while. And I remember she stopped mowing the lawn because of it.

There's not a fast treatment for trigger finger. Mine isn't THAT bad. With rest- with my stupid looking finger splint- for about 3 weeks I'm hoping it will subside.

I told my doctor that I feel like a car that is getting more and more miles on it. And he said, "Yep. And you get things repaired, and replaced, and eventually you gotta just throw the whole thing out."