I do know what you mean about arthritis in the fingers. Osteo arthritis has bothered me more there than in any other place in my body, and believe me when I say it has struck everywhere.
One day in the summer of 1999 I was sitting at my computer at work. I retired from my full time job in 1998 and was asked to come back part time by a previous employer. So, for only 12 hours a week, I did. This particular day, I suddenly felt pain in my left little and ring fingers. I looked down at them, and the little finger was all a bright beet red and swollen. The ring finger was BLACK! Black and swollen. Scared me to death, it did! And Oh, the pain.
Well, the colors went away, and the swelling slowly subsided. Since then, they sometimes swell up and hurt, as do other fingers, but never that bad. Sometimes, many times now in all of these years, the fingers swell until they get little splits in the skin that sting like paper cuts. The fingers look for all this world as though I took a little sharp knife and cut tiny slits in them! But rest assured, I never have done so. The cuts are caused from the swelling.
So for years I have purchased any number of thingamajigs to hold my books. My main effort is lots of little pillows all around, all around in my easy chair.
The really, really bad thing is reading a regular size newspaper while the fingers are stricken. The pain can be so excruciating I want to scream, and then the fingers go into spasm and cannot be separated. The newspaper has to be abandoned until that passes. And no, I cannot subscribe to a different version. Our local paper has not modernized in that way as yet. I gave it up for quite a while, but then found I missed too much local town news and too many obits. After two of my best life time friends died and I missed the fact, I resubscribed; and I am glad I did. I really need that paper.
