Woman unable to move fingers after week-long mobile phone overuse

It is a known fact that mobile addiction and smart phone indulgence 24/7 has left half the world socially paralysed. But perhaps this is a very rare occasion when, with a twist in the meaning of the word ‘mobile’, mobile phone binging has literally left a woman immobile in her fingers.

According to the Chinese newspaper Shanghaist, this incident occurred in the city of Changsha in China’s Hunan province.

The woman had taken off from work for a week but funnily, instead of doing anything meaningful, she chose to spend her entire time stuck to her cell phone. The problem occurred after a few days when she started having severe pain in her right hand and realized that her fingers were strangely stuck in a cellphone holding position. She was unable to move her fingers.

She rushed to the hospital to get it checked and was told by the doctors that she had tenosynovitis. It is an inflammation of the fluid-filled sheath which surrounds a tendon. If any injury occurs in the tendon, which did happen in this case, the sheath may fail to make synovial fluid or may not make enough fluid. This can cause inflammation or swelling of the sheath and you wouldn’t be able to control the movement of the body.

But thankfully, she is able to move her fingers again after being treated.  The doctor who treated her warned that the condition might get way worse for some people than others. He advised the woman to take regular breaks from using her phone.

In this age, probably most of us cannot live without our cellphones. Constantly checking messages, emails, social media, photos, streaming videos and making calls- it feels like it has all that we need. But maybe it is time to rethink and consciously make an effort to put the phones down more often and give our eyes, fingers and ears some rest.

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