Wasting away...

See, here's the thing about writing; it's a repetitive motion. Whether you are typing or scrawling, it is a fairly repetitive thing you do with your wrist and fingers. And that can lead to carpal tunnel syndrome.

I have carpal tunnel. I wear a splint at night to keep any pain to a minimum and so far it hasn't really affected me too much. Just sort of a hyper-awareness of my forearm's interior sometimes, or a slow, dull ache. If I do funky things with my thumb or wrist, I feel a pang, but I have to actually be trying for it.

So, all in all, I wasn't too worried about it, until today, when I was flexing my hand and noticed a bit of a depression along the muscles mass at the bottom of my right thumb that isn't there on my left thumb.

My grandma has something similar and had been talking about it the last time I saw her, which probably the only reason I noticed.

It's not much and it's only when I flex a certain way, but it's there. And I sort of freaked out, because muscle atrophy is one of the signs of advanced carpal tunnel.

Now, it may just be me jumping the gun and freaking out about nothing. Like I said, I don't know if my carpal tunnel would really be considered serious (of course, as I type those words, I can feel an ache starting in the back of my forearm) and atrophy is apparently the last stage of nerve damage. After all, I don't have that pit in my thumb muscles at rest and I'd assume there would be some symptoms if I really had advanced nerve damage. It may just be my paranoid self freaking out about an asymmetric feature of my body.

But still...