Sorry in advance for the long post, hopefully you will take the time to read the whole thing.

About 2.5-3 months ago (early November 2011) I was playing ice hockey when someone hit my right hand (not sure if they "jammed" it or "slashed" it with a stick). I immediately felt pain but the hand never bruised, nor was it cut or visibly injured. I did notice a lump on my fourth metacarpal that was larger than on my left (uninjured) hand. I cannot say for sure if this lump was there prior to the injury or not (I've never injured my hand before so it's possible it's unrelated and I just never noticed it). More on that later.

I immediately began having problems with my hand. It was not a constant or throbbing pain most times. However, if I gripped something and torqued my hand to the left (not wrist but the actual extensor/back side of it) it was very painful around the fourth metacarpal, or sometimes in the space between the fourth and fifth. Also painful was/is using my hand bent back and turning a steering wheel, or anything that compacts the hand in a grip (like a handshake). Additionally placing my hand open and on its back on a table and "rolling" the hand to the left (which moves the hand almost like it's being gripped in a hand shake) hurts. However, doing things like lifting weights when my hand is gripping the bar but not torquing the back of the hand does not particularly hurt.

Two sets of xrays were taken (one a week after the injury, one three weeks after the injury). Neither showed any sign of a fracture whatsoever.

After a month of Naproxen (250mg twice a day), icing the injury, and mostly trying to rest it, I had refractive eye surgery. This eye surgery kept me from doing any sort of physical exercise for a period of one month. I continued to take the Naproxen and ice the hand injury while I was recovering from eye surgery. This took me to January. At this point I resumed physical exercise and noticed that the hand injury was still present with very little improvement.

Eventually I convinced the military to give me an MRI. The MRI results showed a "palpable abnormality" near the fourth metacarpal, but no tendon, ligament, or other damage. The overall result of the MRI was "normal".

After receiving the results of the MRI but finding that my hand was not improving I was sent to an orthopedic surgeon. The surgeon and his assistant attempted to do various tests on my hand to notice any damaged tendons or bones. They could not find anything wrong and their analysis was that I had no damaged tendons or ligaments. The surgeon placed my hand under a "real time xray" (I don't know the technical term, but they had a pedal that they pressed with my hand under the camera and you could see my hand moving on the screen). The doc attempted to stress my hand while looking at the xray (such as pulling my fingers, moving my hand, etc) and could not see anything at all wrong with it.

After another consultation the same day with the head surgeon, he said that it was possible that I had a very slight dislocation that wasn't showing up on the xray or MRI. They ordered a CT scan, which I got 20 minutes later. The results of the CT scan were also negative. The doctor spent about 45 minutes looking over the scans with the assistant, over and over, looking for even the slightest indication of an injury, but could not find anything.

At this point, the docs took me back to the "real time" xray and used that machine to guide in a needle to give me an injection of Cortisone in the joint of the fourth metacarpal about 1/4"-1/2" away from the wrist and told me to follow up in about a month. He also upped my dosage of Naproxen to 500mg, twice per day.

While the Cortisone/Naproxen has helped the injury significantly in terms of day to day pain, I can still feel that the hand is injured in that certain things still cause the same pain, as if the pain is significant enough to override the medication when tweaked but not enough to be noticeable in day-to-day activities like it was before.

I have no idea what is going on with my hand, but it is very frustrating. Does anyone have even a little bit of insight into my situation?