Ian's Scissored Hand
15th September, Chiang Mai, Thailand
You may be wondering, what more is there to Thailand than Chiang Mai? I mean, we've been here for almost three weeks now - isn't it time that we moved on? Well, the truth is that we had planned to leave early this week, and had got a train timetable on Monday with that in mind, but it now looks like we may be staying in Chiang Mai for a little longer. Hopefully it won't be too much longer, but I have to be sensible, you see there aren't many hospitals that I'd trust between here and Bangkok.
Yesterday morning I woke with an ever-so-slightly dead feeling in my right arm. Must have slept on it funny, I thought. This time, though, I couldn't shake out that dead, been-lying-on-it-heavily-all-night feeling, and my right hand refused to work properly. As I type this post, it's been 40 hours since I first realised that there is a problem, and I have been to the hospital today with no conclusion from the doctor as to what's going on; tomorrow I'm going back to see a neurological doc to see if we can get to the bottom of it. So, what's the problem?
If you were to hold your arms out straight in front of you, then tilt your hands back as if to make a 'stop' hand signal, with all fingers together and in a straight line, you might be slightly disconcerted if you found that your dominant hand refused to do what's asked of it. This is what's happening with my right hand: as I tilt my hands back, the left one behaves impeccably, while the fingers of my right hand curl up uselessly. A picture tells a thousand words:
No, I'm not trying 'my hand' at Thai dancing: I'm trying to get my right
hand to do exactly what my left hand is managing with no problem.
There are two types of tendons in the hand, flexors and extendors. The flexors let you make a fist, grab, etc, while the extendors bring the fingers back in a straight line. It's almost as if, overnight, someone came and snipped the extendors in my right hand (or shortened the flexors so that they're pulling more). The strange thing is that I feel no pain, am not numb and have no other discernible side effects, and nor can I pinpoint any cause for this. Is it a trapped nerve? Have I pulled a tendon out perhaps? And wouldn't either of these cause some pain? If you have an idea, please let me know (although I promise to listen to what the doctors have to say!).
So, we're staying put for a little while longer where there are no shortage of decent hospitals. With some hope this'll be diagnosed and fixed - or even better, it'll just sort itself out - and we can be on our way again. Until then, though, I'm probably not going to be writing as much ("yay!" I hear you cry!) because I'm not sure if it's all that wise and, to be honest, I'm not sure how much more we'll have to write about in Chiang Mai. Besides, hiring a moped and going to see more wats is now out of the question - I can't even grab the brake!