Can You Get Worker's Comp for This?

On Sunday, we went to the mall for back-to-school shopping for the whole family.

On Sunday night, I noticed a vague but annoying pain in my right wrist. When I woke up Monday morning, the pain was much more severe: both arms ached from the elbows all the way to the fingertips. Last night, I lay on the couch and rubbed my arms and fingers, trying to massage the pain away. I wondered about arthritis and chronic fatique syndrome and carpal tunnel, and whether, in any of those cases, the pain just came on all of a sudden, in full force, as it had with me. I woke up this morning, still in pain.

I spent the last two days trying to think what I could have done to myself that would account for such pain. I hadn't been typing or knitting, but it felt like some kind of repetitive stress injury.

Perhaps more telling was a red mark on my right forefinger, on the left side, between the first and second knuckle. At first, I thought I had somehow cut myself, but then I realized that the "blood" wouldn't wash off.

Finally, this morning, I got it. While shopping at Penney's this weekend, I had carried around, at any one time, about fourteen articles of clothing on hangers, frequently bending my wrists and arms into weird positions and clenching my fingers in an effort to keep hold of everything. Then, after purchasing a heavy bag of clothes, I carried it all over the mall.

And the red mark on my finger was where the weight of the hangers had broken blood vessels.

How pathetic is that? I hurt myself shopping.