Discussion

Main Board| Accommodation Wanted| Accommodation Offered
Start a new discussion on this board

Let your next career move come to you.

fuxake

so, I have something called Dupuytrens Contracture. Really joyful that is. It's when the tendons in the palm of the hand, coming down from the knuckles through the meat of the palm, get lumpy and hard and begin to shrink and contract. The lumps are hard and on the nodal points. You get bumps in your palm and the shrinking of the tendons pulls your fingers like a marionette.  Your ability to straighten your fingers or bend them back starts to be impacted as it proceeds. They naturally start to take a rest position like you are holding onto a pair of invisible pistols. 

It's genetic, down the maternal lline and from the Vikings, bless them and bless her. It is common alongside, ironically, joint hypermobility (so everything bends and over-extends except my cocking hands ffs).   Eventually your fingers begin to curl completely, the little one most, then less and the index finger the least.  Bill Nighy has this hence his hand posture in all pics, like he has an invisible wine glass bill nighy dupuytren's contracture - Google Search   

It hurts at times and at other times is just a MASSIVE fukkin bore as it also reduces your ability to judge grip pressure.  The surgery options are poor because the scar tissue is as impactful as the calcification you are tryin to cure. 

My bro has it too in one hand. I seem to be ahead of him in decrepitude though he is 5 years older than me. Apparently it is exacerbated by physical impact so all my gardening, screwdriver and socket action with the cars etc explains why the right hand is ahead developmentally of the left and why he, being less active in that regard, is less impacted. 

Now it's taken a f arking annoying turn. In the last week's it has started to develop into something called "trigger finger". I really did NOT need this shit. As the tendons tighten they gets stuck in the knuckle so as you move your fingers (e.g. open hand to clenched fist) it's like a ratchet - no smooth movement just a load of pressure build up then snap closed. Like some sort of decrepit crocodiled handed Rumpelfukkinstiltskin.

When I shake hands with people they're like "go easy man" as I lock in and squeeze their arm off by mistake with my horrible lumpy hand then cannot let go as they are in a robot lock clench. 

Shoot me now please. 

gonna change my username to weird scary double claw grabby guy

 

worse on the hand shake thing is as it develops you cannot hold out a straight hand so people get a handful of curled fingers and that's a freakout situation and a complete clusterfu ck .  I shall  soon take up Nighy's hand wavy hippy "hi" greeting (you won't see him shaking hands but you will see him hug and rub a clubbed fist down the back of people which is like being cuddled by a hoofed animal and not good).

U can get surgery for it. Loads of folk have it up here. Viking lineage ftw!

(I can say this comfortably with my anglo saxon hands and feet but do think it's cool)

my left hand can still go flat against a table top and I can lift my wrist while keeping my fingers flat. My right one can't. It makes a cockeyed attempt at going flat but then if I lift there is no flex at the knuckles and the whole hand lifts up leaving the finger tips on the table at best. 

I'm glad I am a lawyer not a surgeon. I would be in the shit if latter. so would my patients.  

It's not cool. 

They gave us joints that turn and rupture too easily they cause our womenfolk to have difficult births, they cause digestive transit issues in some , they make our hands into useless club mits and they create a sensitivity to sunlight and a ginger offspring risk.

My Dad had this. 

It’s not great. But… your happiness and vocation is not based on fine motor control. As you say you’re not a surgeon or a painter.

You may have to get someone in to give Mrs Mutters her foot rubs tho. 

I do paint watercolours in fact but am losing that finesse. I can still do a pretty good job with a pencil.  I have decided to explore stained glass window making as a next art/making venture. 
 

I do thank God that I’m not a violinist or pianist. It would be game over now.  
If I was a harpist and I might have a serious advantage. Ready hands. 
 

I fell in love with a woman once who was the harpist at the Royal Opera house. So much long long brown hair. Long hair everywhere in my flat. It ended for just that reason and the fact that she would return from work at 1 in the morning all week except Sundays. 

nglishRose18 Sep 23 19:22

Reply| 

Report

Sorry to hear this. It sounds very annoying h indeed. My gran had it. 
 

such a lovely post, kind, thoughtful .. then the you are grandparent vintage’ soft put down velvet cushion. 
 

 

Get the surgery!  
 

I finally had the knees diagnosed (2.5 years on, please stand for the nhs).  Thankfully a tear so keyhole job rather than full knee replacements.  

Fun fact, Wang.  My dad (RIP) had to have both his knees done because of playing rugby when he was younger.  First one was done on the NHS, left a big scar and they dropped him on his head when putting him in bed after the op (his nieghbour in the ward told him).  2nd op was private and done thru keyhole. 

Reply| 

Report

Would be interested to know what evolutionary advantage, if any. this gave the Vikings.  Better able to grip oars/swords/axes? 
 

 

better able to say ‘uh dunno’ and raise meaningless hands in response to enquiry?

The evolutionary advantage probably lay in no longer being able to wield an axe, and therefore being tasked to stay behind and make sure all the womenfolk were looked after whilst everyone else went into battle. 

i have it

Operation on the little finger on my right hand  years ago (no real issue with scars). Then first finger on the left hand started going....so got radiation treatment on both hands, and it's not progressed since.

Still have the cords in my hands, and when I cycle/row/chop wood a lot, they hurt. But you can stretch them out again, whereas before I couldn't

look into the radiation; BUPA will authorise it easily. Best man to visit is in Guildford.

Hurry up and get a puppy so you can still stroke her with a flat hand (my chum got a 7 week old black lab a few weeks back; seems very young - they don’t let pedigree cats go until 12 weeks. Chum spent a week on the sofa sleeping with pup and taking him out every two hours to pee. But he’s very, very sweet)

I quite like scars so that's fine.  They'd be going some to beat my best tho, that'd be a fooking big keyhole.

my head is made of adamantium and seems impervious to bonkage

We thought we had some viking ancestors - quite a few blonde children etc and from NE England but thankfully don't have this nasty thing - poor Muttley.

 

I don't really understand why I have nothing wrong. It seems completely at odds with other people my age. Perhaps all the bad health things are just going to come down on me in one go in the future.

I wouldn't like the hand thing because of playing the piano (and typing for work).

I could have sworn I was descended from Vikings.  I'm tall and blond, I could just imagine my ancestors stepping boldly off a longboat, axe in hand, challenging the Saxon thengs to single combat. Then I got an Ancestry UK DNA test.  Turns out I'm very much anglo-saxon-brytthonic. Quite possibly a Brummie.

 

sad

kaulbach18 Sep 23 20:08

Reply| 

Report

The evolutionary advantage probably lay in no longer being able to wield an axe, and therefore being tasked to stay behind and make sure all the womenfolk were looked after whilst everyone else went into battle. 
 

could be 

 

although an alternative slant is that the hands are permanently positioned as if round an oar so maybe it guaranteed a position in the crew and presented max pillaging opportunity and all that went with that, so the genes spread. 
 

 

Dupuytrens was a Frenchman. He limited his research to his home nation. In his original research he identified this issue predominantly in Northern French coastal fishing communities in Brittany and Normandy. Because they drank a lot of cider he wrongly concluded that it was the impact of excessive alcohol on the circulatory system if working and worn hands. All those nets, ropes, pots and oars. It stayed, in the minds of GPs, a mistaken marker of alcohol excess for decades. Only with the emergence of genealogy and then genetics were they able to identify the Viking link. It is also present in SW Ireland, Cornwall, the Scottish coast and islands, and the North East coast of England and some in East Anglia, always a coastal community source…

all the surgeons I have met say do nothing.

every one of them

do nothing

 

What sort of advice is that. I am quite good at doing nothing without your sponsorship you Aston driving twot. I came to you to DO SOMETHING

Sorry to hear that Mutters.  I have it but much more mild than you and in one hand, and my mother has it but and the trigger finger thing over the last couple of years.  She had surgery, first one had to be redone unfortunately but the result of the second one has been really good.  Was a painful and awkward recovery but she says well worth it in the end   

sounds crap, sorry to hear this

surely physio, finger bending exercise and massaging the nodules must help? Have you found a physio specialising in this condition? they must exist

The problem is that the physio solution is impeded.  The lumpy things in the palmar fascia (hand palm soft tissue) and plantar fascia (foot sole soft tissue) are large, hard and form around the nodal points of the tendons. Usually physiotherapy would be effective to manage immobile tendons but where they are impeded by the growth of, relatively speaking, large masses (like sarcoma but not tumours) then manipulation doesn't actually do anything.  The lumps are like hardened chunks of chewing gum.  This impedes the strings that make the hand and fingers operate, causing them to tighten. They cannot easily be loosened. There was a treatment involving freezing and cracking the tendons, then surgically lengethening them. It was found to be of short lived value as it caused scarring (pain and more lumps) and a tendency to breakage which is worse than stiffness.

Mutters, one of my partners has/had it. He swears by Karim Bakri who is into micro surgery and the new injectables (band name?!) Of proteins which break down the chewing gum. 

My dad had this - he ended up with the two smaller fingers basically fully curled up and using the other 2 and his thumb - could have been operated on, but he wasnt arsed.  It never impacted his main hobby - lifting a wine glass, and could he still do everything else he wanted.  Just looked a bit wierd. Used to freak my kids out, they thought Grandad had claws 

Join the discussion

Login Register