About six weeks ago my husband Steve (who usually writes this column) was going down into our dungeon-like basement to flip a breaker switch and nearly falling, caught himself with his right hand on the block wall. His whole hand hurt for awhile, but his ring finger really started bothering him and keeping him up at night. He went to his doctor, who sent him to a hand surgeon who said he needed to fix the tendon on that finger with a small surgical procedure, which he had done last Tuesday.
It just happened that last Saturday, I attended the Pike Township Historical Society Meeting, whose President (Diane Martenet) is a good friend I went to Herron Art School with 50 years ago. She had found on Facebook a mutual college friend, David Heady and he was giving a talk about his father who fought on D-Day in WWII. David gave a very moving talk. Afterwards while talking about our lives the last 50 years, I said that my husband and I had our DNA done. He had too and said he found out he was mostly Viking and had the mark as he opened his hand to show me the knotted skin under his ring finger. He assumed I knew what he meant, but I had never heard of such a thing. Could this be what was wrong with my husband’s finger? So as soon as I got back to my computer I looked it up “Viking finger problem” and sure enough there were many explanations. Apparently the problem with his finger is a genetic disease producing contracture of the fingers on either hand (usually the fourth or fifth finger) and is called Dupuytren’s Contracture after Baron Guillaume Dupuytren, who was once Napoleon’s surgeon.
The disease slowly flexes the fingers towards the palm of the hand. Eventually the fingers cannot be straightened out and the person cannot put his hand in his pocket without catching the finger, and it makes it difficult to shake hands, open the hand or do necessary tasks like writing or dressing. It happens in 3 to 6% of people worldwide (3 to 1, men) and the highest percentage in Scandinavian countries. Countries that have a high rate of immigration from Northern Europe like Australia have 30% of the men over 60 with the disease. If you have this condition you share it with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
It is also not an easy procedure to fix as the thickened and contracted tissues (called the aponeurosis) in the palm of the hand have to be dissected out from the nerves and arteries which can be caught up in the thickened tissue. Not only is the surgery difficult, but it can come back in 20–40% of patients after five years.
There is another surgical technique, known as Needle Aponeurotomy (NA), (which is what I think my husband had) which is under local anesthetic and involves partially cutting the thickened tissue with the side of a needle. Following this, forced extension of the affected fingers results in the snapping of the aponeurosis, allowing the finger to straighten out once more. His surgery went very smoothly and with little discomfort. The big bandage is off and he’s wearing just a little gauze taped on. He will soon be fit enough to pillage the village once more.
If you look this disease up on Wikipedia there are a half dozen other treatments and surgeries described. Steve says, “The time taken in the surgery was minimal. One of the nurses said that if I had to have hand surgery, this was the one to have. There was a hood between me and the doctor. My hand was numb but I could move my fingers. A very odd feeling. The surgeon worked on my hand about 12 minutes and it was done. I was in the operating room just about a half hour. Because of a local anesthetic, my recovery time was rapid and without the usual nausea and dizziness. I held my hand up in the air and put ice on it to contain the swelling. By the next day the swelling was gone and the pain was minimal.”
I’ve e-mailed David again, now that I know a little more about the condition and he says “I’ve not had the specific surgery for Dupuytren’s but have had two other possibly related surgeries. One for ‘trigger finger’, a similar contracture of my pinkie finger on the same hand, and a growth just below the nail bed of my middle finger on the back of the same hand. So far, none of this has prevented me from drawing.” Remember, I went to art school with David and he’s quite an accomplished artist — you should see his pastel portraits.