Wednesday, March 15, 2006

What's Up With Your Fingers?

I've been told that blogging about the stats of those viewing your own blog is really dredging the bottom of the barrel of topics to cover. But I'll admit, I'm fascinated with the stats. I'm fascinated to find out that the moment I make a post, several complete strangers happen to find my blog with blogs of their own which are nothing but advertisements. (This, I've read, is affectionally called splogs, or spam blogs.) I'm fascinated to find out which areas of the world people think I actually have something interesting to blog about. (As it turns out, not many.) And right now, I'm fascinated at how much of an epidemic, apparently, numb fingertips are.

In the past two or three weeks, I think I've had more people find my blog because they were searching for "numb fingertips" than any other reason. You see, I had blogged about the fact that I had numb fingertips a couple months ago. It was a short-lived ailment. I woke up one morning unable to feel the fingers on my left hand. It lasted through the day, and into the next day. By the time the weekend was over, they were fine again, and I haven't had a problem since.

I had discussed the matter with a colleague and friend of mine, who said that what can happen is if you lay on your arm wrong, it can cause inflammation that temporarily pinches the nerve. The condition is, well, temporary. And was certainly the case for me.

But there are times it isn't. Numb fingertips can be the sign of something more serious, including, but not limited to, various repetitive strain injuries. So, the fact that so many people are reading my blog entry on numb fingertips does have me concerned. Nor for myself, but at just how prevalent the problem apparently has become. And why now? Why in the past few weeks? Before now, there was an occasional search on "numb fingertips". But today, I'm getting several hits per day.

I have no answers. But it is an example of the kind of thing I think about when looking at my blog stats. And, of course, now that I'm writing this next entry on the same topic, I expect even more hits.