Trigger finger - looking for self help

Not meds, but when Tamoxifen gave me trigger thumb, my PT pointed me to some exercises online (sorry, I no longer remember where) and did a couple of ultrasound treatments in the office. These took care of it.

Dear Ellyn, I had the same problems after one year on letrozole. An elastic therapeutic tape was the thing that finally helped me cope with the pain in my trigger thumb. I've been on these antihormonals for 5 years now, and the painful stiffness has not recurred so far. Hope it helps. Gudrun

(The profile below is not mine)

I have trigger thumb after 6 mos on exemestane. Every morning, I soak left hand in hot water and massage thumb/palm for about 10 min to loosen it. Afterwards I have complete thumb flexibility with no pain. It will start to stiffen and hurt by evening, but I'm noticing the pain is somewhat less and flexibility better each day, so hoping can fix problem with time.

Nevertheless, I see all my docs next month and will bring up ultrasound therapy.

I've had several trigger fingers but all before I ever had cancer. I saw a hand surgeon and started out with xrays and then cortisone injections to shrink the swollen tendon. While this worked for awhile, I ended up having surgery to open up the tendons and that solved the problem. Not having enough space for the tendon to glide through can cause permanent damage. It was a very easy, 1/2 hr surgery but took about a month for it to heal each time.

However, if your trigger fingers are caused by the anti hormonal meds only then I wonder if the problem would reverse itself after getting off the meds. I realize your asking, what can I do to manage this and that these meds are long term. Maybe get a referral to orthopedics. I know how painful these can be. At least in my case, exercising a swollen tendon would have only made it worse.