My right pinky has decided it hates me.  I can’t straighten it or use it to function.  Typing is very difficult, driving was almost impossible, even showering and getting dressed this morning was a challenge.  There is no injury.  I didn’t hit it with a hammer.  There is no infection, no romantic rose thorn pricks.  No one stepped on it.  I didn’t slam it into a wall accidentally.  Absolutely nothing wrong with it.  The pain scale is at a 10 when I move it, 9 when I don’t.  On the relentlessness scale it’s at a 10.  It woke me up at 3:30 this morning and wouldn’t let me get back to sleep.  There is some swelling, nothing alarming, no discoloration.  Like I said, no injury.  So what’s the problem?  I have no idea, and I’m reluctant to walk into an ER and say, hello, my little finger is sore.

The pain started at the end of last week, just a twinge here and there, and has built since then.  Hopefully it’s on the way down again, and I’ll be able to sleep tonight.  If experience says anything, sleep will help reduce the pain.

There’s really only one reason to contact a doctor about my little finger.  I’m hitting that magic age when some of these random things could actually be age-related, and there could actually be some method of pain control or treatment.  I just read an article that said something like fibromyalgia was the most common cause of chronic pain in women between the ages of 18 and 55.  I’m 54.  I take that to mean one of two things:  fibromyalgia goes away with aging, or fibromyalgia morphs into other treatable conditions with age.  Either would be just fine.  Of course the third option is the rest of the population catches up to the chronic pain statistics, and age-related chronic pain outstrips us with fibromyalgia.  No one wins at that point.

I’ll have to look further into that.  In the meantime, I need to get through the workday typing away with an uncooperative finger that I’m ready to just disconnect completely, and then I have to go exercise with it.  I wonder if there will be pushups tonight.  Could be a big problem.  But we’ll see what happens and take it a moment at a time.