What a pain!

When I was much younger and not snowed under by chronic health-related problems, it made me laugh to hear of an elderly person afflicted with what he called a ‘frozen shoulder’...

When I was much younger and not snowed under by chronic health-related problems, it made me laugh to hear of an elderly person afflicted with what he called a ‘frozen shoulder’, The image evoked a carnivorous gustatory delight, comparable to steaks and sirloins. I trivialised a similar reference to a tennis elbow, which impairs the flexibility of arm. That is not something that could happen to me, I thought, with confident callousness, because I have never been into sports.

Later, I also learnt of impairments like house-maid’s knee, baker’s cyst, golfer’s elbow and Achilles’ tendon. In my forties, fractures and slipped discs apart, I acquired an excruciating stiffness in the joint between my forefinger and the rest of the hand. Many orthopaedists’ fees, physiotherapy sessions, anti-inflammatory drugs and steroid injections later, I asked my doctor what my condition was called in common parlance. A ‘trigger finger’, he clarified, because it is something that happens to soldiers.

My earlier dismissal did not work on this occasion, for I suffered from ‘triggering’ despite not being qualified to do so. Recently, I have developed an intense pain in the right wrist, where it meets the thumb. I at first ascribed it to sitting for long hours at the computer keyboard. But since one uses the thumb only for the space bar, it was unlikely to have caused the racking discomfort. But Eureka! I figured out that while using the mobile phone, one has to be ‘all thumbs’ — from dialling to moving between different modes to sending messages. Ever since my exposure to the mobile handset rather late in my life, I have been like a child with a new toy. Being verbose and never having cultivated an economy of expression, my messages are like short stories, nay novellas, although I challenge anybody to question their literary merit. This time, however, I have myself had to coin the lay person’s term for this medical condition. None other than a ‘mobile wrist’ will now enhance the vocabulary of our quasi-medical dictionary.

Magnitude 7.1 earthquake strikes near east coast of Russia’s Kamchatka region

World41 min ago

A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit near Russia's Kamchatka region on Saturday, according to the German Research Centre for Geosciences. The quake occurred at a depth of 10 km and was felt on the east coast.

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