A Brush With De Quervain's

Medicine is one of those fields in which very little is charming. Yet medical conditions are often named for their discoverers, which never fails to seem quaint and earnest. As if a particular predicament did not exist before it was recognized by Dr Down or Dr Alzheimer and shared with a grateful world.

I have no idea who De Quervain was, but I am absolutely certain that the condition that bears this doctor's name has been around since time immemorial.

Before "De Quervain's" became real to me, it manifested as a curious and painful stiffness in the wrists. As the baby writhed and grunted and signaled readiness for a nighttime feeding, I would stand by the bassinet doing some grunting of my own, still mostly asleep, unable to mobilize my hands and reach for the child. I would eventually stretch them enough, or wake up enough, to reach into the bassinet and lift the baby, ignorantly utilizing the same rotten body mechanics that got me into the predicament in the first place.

This continued under the radar for weeks, and the baby grew, until the pain, and not just stiffness became a common fixture of the waking hours. I knew I should not lift the baby so much--but how can you even attempt such a thing? Looking around the internet, I learned that new mothers and grandmothers often have this kind of wrist pain, which resembles carpal tunnel pain but is restricted to the tendons at the base of the thumb. De Quervain's was real, belatedly.

I began to lift the baby with a neutral, not bent wrist. But a hard bump the size of a lentil grew under the skin of the wrist, below the thumb. The right wrist now hurt all the time, not just when I was hoisting the baby in a contorted manner. Pressure on it of any sort was excruciating. I tried to immobilize it with a bandage and woke up one night to find myself tearing at it, and the wrist burning with pain.

Finally, I could not lift the baby much at all. I would awkwardly pick him up using my forearms rather than my hands, and wretchedly try to maneuver him around. Or I would wait for my husband to step in and lift, rotate, and tuck my son's body into the desired position.

I had resisted splints because pressure on the wrist was so excruciating, but finally I was convinced that, since my physical misery was only increasing, I should give them an honest try. At the low point, unable to turn a doorknob or pick up a pillow, I finally splinted.

The splint was a battered neoprene one covered with mortar and speckled with paint. It's the grit between the tiles of our bathroom floor, the color of our kitchen. I padded the inside with foot-pampering gel toe-spacers, to take pressure off the lentil-like growth, now visible beneath the skin. I put this ugly contraption on. The relief was immediate. I refused to take it off until I had a fresh, unsoiled but otherwise identical model, to wear.

Two days later, my wrists are fine. I wear the brace at night and intermittently during the day. I avoid all pressure on a bent wrist. Since the flaring pain is gone, I am functioning well. Most interesting of all, the lentil-like growth, which two days ago was a small mountain pushing whitely outward against skin and vein, has now completely vanished.

I move my body and employ my wrists with great care. The baby has gained even more weight; he is a solid little turkey of boy-meat, more charming and engaging every day. The online descriptions of De Quervain's are depressingly short on successful treatments (acetaminophen, surgery). In this case, what saved me was listening to my body and being curious and desperate enough to rig up a solution that worked. I wish I had been more careful from the beginning.

Fortunately, the way karma seems to work, you keep encountering your issues in various forms until you resolve them. Today the wrists, tomorrow, who knows?