Being stupid for over a decade, I’ve tried many street sports without wristguards. Before learning how to fall properly my hands and fingers caught a beating every time I tested gravity. Every once in a while I still grab a handful of pavement on my way down…
I’ve hit my thumb many, many times and seem to have developed some nerve damage. Every time my thumb smacks something, I lose feeling in my thumbtip for a minute or two, followed by some unpleasant tingling.
A quick Google later I find it’s a superficial branch of the median nerve. This nerve runs up either side of the thumb, one can feel it by pinching one’s thumb between the first and second joints and twisting the thumb. Feel any tingling?
I superimposed a picture of the nerve on my poor thumb:
The arrow points to where the nerve traverses the 2nd joint of the thumb. This is where it gets mashed in my case. It makes sense now why I can’t feel my thumbtip afterwards… this nerve branches to cover most of the tip of my thumb!
Does anything like this happen to anyone else? Have there been any adverse affects other than tingling? Should I be worried?
My thumb is fine but the rest of the hand is not showing a lot of progress despite extensive therapy.
I ignored some sage advice to don wrist guards thinking that I didn’t need them. One brief careless moment on a wet downhill stretch caused a nasty UPD which resulted in a trip to the emergency room. There was a fracture and a displacement at the base of the metacarpals(?) of the right hand. It’s just above the wrist. I had surgery the next day with three pins inserted across the breadth of the hand. My wife and I left for a two-week vacation in Hawaii a few days later and I was relegated to being a genuine tourist - no golf, no windsurfing, no snorkeling, etc…
The injury was more than three months ago and I have difficulty bending one of the fingers of the hand. My oldest daughter is a Certified Occupational Therapist and advised me that these kinds of injuries take a long time to heal (especially when you’re elderly!).
Snow is falling in Northern New England and I’m heading to Vermont to get back on my snowboard. This year, I’m adopting wrist guards and I guarantee you I’ll be wearing them when I get back on the uni in the Spring.
