I wanted to take a moment to update you all on what’s exactly going on with my hand. This is based on my best understanding. And if it’s too many details you can just scroll to the bottom for my conclusion.

What I have is a combination of a bone-spur (extra bone growth) on my thumb, and ‘trigger finger’ in the same thumb. There’s some nodule that’s ‘too big to fir through my thumb-tube’ meaning a various amount of pain and swelling depending on what I do with it and an inability to bring the thumb in to my palm. Both of these problems stem from me being such a hard working paragon of cartooniness. Yes, now I have medical proof of my webcomic supremacy!

My thumb’s been bugging me since early June, when I thought I somehow dislocated it. We were about to head out on our summer vacation and quickly got it diagnoses as something that didn’t need treatment right away. I needed to know that I was not damaging my hand over time by not treating it. I still did a regiment of over-the-counter anti-inflammatorys and ice packs.

5 weeks ago I finally got an appointment with a really well accredited hand surgeon who gave me a cortisone injection right in the palm of the hand (that suuuuuuucccccked). She said it could take 3 weeks to work, and to ‘not overdo it’ with my thumb (‘overdoing it’ seemed to imply ‘full-time dock-work’). She said I could keep drawing, painting miniatures, etc.

On the 3rd day after the shot, it started feeling better, then quickly regressed back to the current ‘normal’. The whole time I tried to avoid heavy ‘lifting’ or pressure on my thumb, but found myself occasionally having to catch a dropped pot-lid or move a generator around or lift a hurt child, something that caused a sharp ‘owie.’

1 week ago-ish  (Thursday  afternoon with the Friday comic in the queue) I saw the doctor again. And she asks if I want to try another injection or go for surgery on my hand, an in-house 15 minute out-patient thing.  I said ‘Take the Bloody Shot’ (sorry, channeling M there) determined to avoid any hand surgery, no matter how minor, if possible. I was told if the second shot doesn’t take, there’s no reason to try a third.

So I said to myself, if I skip Monday’s comic, I can sling up my right arm to remind me to not use my thumb AT ALL until Tuesday (when I’d need to create the Wednesday comic). That should give the cortisone the best possible room to work. So that’s what I did. I was the one-armed man until yesterday (Tuesday). But I’ve seen no improvement whatsoever. Crap.

At this point, I’m still going to avoid "overdoing it", but feel safe that going back to drawing the comic is not going to make things worse.

The problem is now I have to figure out the when/where/hows of the surgery. As simple as it is, and if everything goes right, .I assume it will cause me to have to take time off from the strip. But I don’t think there’s any sense of urgency. With the holidays looming, Mohkadun approaching a crescendo, the freight from California coming in, and WindyCon on top of my other work I might have to put off the surgery for a while. Yet I’m not sure. What I need now is information on the procedure, and I hope to dig that up soon. And that’s where things stand right now.

Conclusion:
1) Bone-Spur and Trigger-finger in my drawing hand will most likely need surgery, and when that surgery happens I will probably have to take a hiatus from the strip for a currently unknown amount of time.
2) There is no rush on getting the surgery done, and for now I can keep working on the strip without further damaging my hand.

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This page has all the details but I also wanted to mention “The Sampire” Defenders-Only Comic Book! 37 Pages of Sampire!

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