On writing my fingers to the boneskin

I have “Daumenknochenhautentzündung”.

“Thumb bone skin inflammation” sounds pretty impressive, but German is a whole lot cooler :). I think the Latin is periostitis but I may well be wrong.

I didn’t know that was even a thing until yesterday, I just knew my thumb hurt.

Apparently, all bones are covered with a very thin, very delicate layer of “skin” responsible for connecting them to the ligaments and nerves and blood supply and who knows what (ask someone medical). If you repeatedly bash a part of your body where the bone is close to the surface (like your shin, or your fingers) there’s not enough flesh to cushion the impact, and you run the risk of damaging the aforementioned boneskin (which presumeably has a fancy Latin name like periost).

According to the internet, this kind of damage is generally caused by running in the wrong shoes.

According to my doctor, it can also be caused by writing too much. The repeated pressure of holding a pen, when you aren’t used to it, is enough to disturb the boneskin. Seems there was a reason behind my year 2 teacher’s constant critisism of how tightly I held (and still hold) “writing implements”.

My thumb, the one that hurt when I wrote all those revision cards, is suffering from accute Daumenknochenhautentzündung. That basically means it really hurts and I shouldn’t use it for a week or so.

Be warned.

🙂

 

0 thoughts on “On writing my fingers to the boneskin

    1. Thank you 🙂 I hope it heals quickly too – it’s hard to imagine how hard life is without a thumb until it happens, and I think I fully appreciate them both now… and I want to start doing all kinds of things, and ach, woe is me 🙁 *grins * I saw a woman at the station on the way home and she had her whole arm and 3 fingers in a plastercast, and I felt a lot pathetic moaning about my thumb….

  1. By the time you learn to spell and articulate that diagnosis the thumb will be healed! {I hope so anyway} But as you speak fluent German it may take a little longer. Good luck with it!
    It’s interesting to note how much we take our body and its “bits and pieces” for granted until something changes.
    I think we are”marvelously made”!!!!!!

  2. Many, many years ago I nearly sawed off my thumb (my firstborn was only a baby) and I do remember how hard it is to do ordinary things without using your thumb. Hope it gets well quickly.

  3. Daumenknochenhautentzündung sounds a lot more painful than periostitis … or maybe like a swear word you might use when you feel it. I don’t mean to sound callous. Best wishes with it, anyway!

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