Sugar Turned On Me

Recently, my wife saw a man who had a condition called Trigger Finger. This does not mean that he regularly made outlaws eat lead for their crimes against the townsfolk, but that he had a condition associated with his diabetes. I decided to see what Auntie Wikipedia had to say about it.

Trigger finger gets it’s name, not from the finger curling, but from it being released. The condition is characterized by your tendon and your tendon sheath being of mismatched size. This results in your index finger (sometimes middle or ring) cracking when you extend it. Later on, it becomes painful to extend and if you unclench a fist, the finger will remain curled until force is applied and it pops into position as if a trigger was pulled.

The diseases is ideopathic. Despite what Gregory House thinks, this has nothing to do with idiots but just means that the cause is uncertain. It has been noticed in people with diabetes and is on the list of lovely things like neuropathy and heart disease that might come about as complications.

Trigger finger is treated with cortezone injections and sometimes with surgery.

While I’m glad to know in advance about yet another thing that might happen to me, I’m not looking forward to questioning the health of my finger every time I hear it pop. Through martial arts training, playing with sharp objects and basically being a klutz now and again, my fingers have had enough to deal with without the prospect of permenantly throwing gang signs.

Then again, maybe I could form my own diabetic gang? Hyperglycemic for life, punk.

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