A thumb brace has let me play games pain-free for the first time in years

After a year-long break to rehab injuries, getting back into playing video games triggered a cascade failure. My weakened muscles struggled to hold hypermobile joints in place; even a 10-minute session flared my thumbs to hot pokers. My occupational therapist had been full of inventive solutions so far — even making me a custom pen holder for journaling — but video games stumped him and basically all the other doctors I talked to.

After weeks of frustrating research, I found one brace that got me back to not just playing games again but also mending my own clothes and cooking, too. It’s called the Push Metagrip; it looks like plastic armor that goes around the base of the thumb, and if it were a human being I would kiss it right on the mouth. 

None of my providers recommended it to me for playing video games, even when I literally overheard those very same people suggesting the very same brace for hobbies like crochet or baking. No brand is paying me to say this. And I am obviously not a doctor qualified to tell you what you need, but I also don’t want to gatekeep the brace that helped me play console games again.