It's been a while since the last one and there's been some progress. Still waiting on some doctors visits before I have a full diagnosis and a plan, but I know a lil bit more now.
Looks like I am dealing with two or three separate problems:
1.General fatigue from overwork. Exercises, stretches and icing it help and it's getting better.
2.Some sort of mysterious wrist pain... May just be an extension of problem #1? Exercise seems to help a bit. Getting an ultrasound to check it out in may. The x-rays came out clean so it's not a bone issue.
3.The big problem: It seems that the RCL in my thumb may be partially torn. Gonna need another ultrasound to check it out to know for sure and the extent of the damage. It may require surgery to fix. We'll see. Luckily that ligament seems to be useful for almost anything besides drawing. Drawing is about the only thing I can do with my right thumb without it hurting. Funny that.
All of the above may be wrong. The diagnosis process is slow, because I have to wait on hand specialists to have openings. It's a bit frustrating, but what can you do. At least I can draw in the meantime.
I asked my ortho about working and he said that none of what's wrong with my hand is gonna get worse from using it to draw so I can do it as long as I don't go too hard. I've already had almost a month of resting my hand and there's only so much you can do that before it becomes detrimental.
For the last three weeks I've been practicing a different pen grip that doesn't stress my hand as much and I've been very mindful of proper ergonomics while I draw etc.. I can draw quite a lot before my hand starts feeling weird as long as I don't try to do anything too precise.
Which means I am absolutely unable to ink right now. Any time I try to draw a precise line I can feel it taking a lot out of my "hand stamina" budget. I think that inking 1300+ pages of comics over the last 10 years with a fucked up death grip on my pen may have been the cause of my recent problems haha.
For now, I'll focus on taking it easy and working on the Hunter series, while waiting on the final diagnosis. After that I'll have to figure out how to finish Alfie without my hand falling off.
Right now I don't think I'll ever go back to inking. Feels scary to do, and I really, really like the flat lineless style. I may just stick to that to be safe? We'll see
None of what is happening with my hand is actually that bad. It's all fixable. I should be back to fully functional in a couple of months if everything goes well.