Drunk Elbow or, Hazardous Jigsaw Puzzle Assembly.

This past Tuesday as I was about to, or so I thought at the time, go to sleep, an excruciating pain suddenly flared up in my left arm. I could also feel my heart beat accelerate up to 225 beats per minute. Fortunately, we have a quality heart monitor device so I strapped that on. My blood pressure reading was 225 and my pulse about 75. The worst of all of this was the pain.

I feared that like most men my age, this was the “big one” — a cardiac failure. The thoughts that immediately arise are; no more good food, no strenuous exercise, and no more watching my Packers or Wisconsin Badgers’ football games. I’m thinking at this point that most of my time will be spent tracking my prescriptions and monitoring my vital signs.

The response to the 911 call I made was excellent overall. 2 guys arrived less than 5 minutes after the call, placing stickers all over my body which monitor vital signs. These signs began returning to normal as their examination progressed.

The 2 guys asked if I wanted to be transported to the hospital. They cautioned me that with normal vital signs, I will be a low priority at the hospital. I declined. Instead, I went to an Urgent care facility less than 3 minutes from our home. It’s there that the attending Nurse Practitioner informed me that the entire event was muscular and not related to my heart.

My daughter is a trauma specialist who has seen just about every cardiac and blood flow condition. She subsequently informed me that I was experiencing “drunk elbow”, or radial nerve compression in the arm resulting from direct pressure against a firm object. 

In my case, the “firm object” was our dining room table where we, my wife and I, act out our obsession with jigsaw puzzles. Instead of sitting, I stand up and lean over the table supported by my left forearm bent at the elbow. Over the 2 days prior to the 911 call I was in this leaning position for more than 6 hours.

In all of the internet responses to my search “drunk elbow”, jigsaw puzzle assembly never came up.

Given the severity of my experience, whomever is in charge of the internet needs to inform all users, globally, of the hazards of jigsaw assembly.

This has been a public service announcement.