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WHY MY THUMB HURTS
IT HAPPENS WITH AGE
January 11, 2007 - A few weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night worried about the pain in my right thumb. I didn't think much of it, and tried to stretch it out and massage it so I could get back to my restless slumber.
Instead of helping, moving my thumb and rubbing it only made the pain more noticeable. I gave up after a few minutes, figuring that I must've pushed something the wrong way, unknowingly fallen on it, or just jarred it against something in my studio.
Unfortunately, the pain never went away, and continued unabated for the next few nights. While I ran through a suicide mission to stretch and gesso ten canvases tonight, the pain in my thumb started up again en masse, and all of a sudden the pain, symptoms and my worst fears were simultaneously realized - stretching canvases for years on end has damaged my right thumb.
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My healthy left thumb with my aching right thumb
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| I'm right handed, so my thumb helps hold pens, pencils, pieces of charcoal and most of the time, paintbrushes and palette knives. I'm still only 31, so knowing this little issue is going to be with me for the rest of my life frightens me
- although not nearly as much as knowing its only going to get worse. Of course, I'm not the first person to suffer ailments like this - a friend of mine has almost entirely destroyed his arm at the tender age of 27 sculpting large styrofoam squirrels, and another friend of mine - the same age as me - suffered through similar ailments as myself on her painting/sculpting hand just a couple of months ago. She has medical insurance, and worried it was a broken hand or worse, the idiotic doctor, not helping at all, laughed off the injury and told
it she had nothing to worry about - it was only advanced arthritis and a carpal tunnel injury and she had nothing to fear, despite the fact her ENTIRE CAREER RELIES ON HER HANDS. I've always prided myself on building some pretty slick and tight canvases. I pull them tight by hand, and don't rely too much on pliers or the like to pull them - instead I have some fairly well developed forearms and now a sore thumb. While looking at some power sanders at the hardware store today, I told Chris about how nice and smooth a
pneumatic sander is. He replied, "all pneumatic tools are awesome". I didn't realize it, but I really want to invest in a nice pneumatic stapler soon. And so does my thumb.
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the latest in a long line of conspirators against my well being.
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