Code Y93D1 – Injured While Crocheting
By Rachel Choi – 27 CommentsHave you ever injured yourself while crocheting? Cramped your hand up, cut yourself, poked an eye out? Now there’s a medical code for that – Code Y93D1: Injured While Crocheting or Knitting.
Hospitals and doctors in the U.S. use thousands of codes for medical services when billing to insurance companies. In a recent article it discusses over 120,000 new codes that are being added, one of which is the crochet/knitting code. The purpose of these new codes is to help describe as best as possible how or where the injury occurred.
Other than the code for crocheting there are other fun codes, such as being injured in an opera house, being injured by walking into a lamp post, injured from a burn due to water skis on fire, etc. Here’s a link to the original article: Walked Into a Lamppost? Hurt While Crocheting? Help Is on the Way Feel free to search though the different codes if you’re interested!
What do you think about Code Y93D1 – Injured While Crocheting? Have you ever injured yourself while crocheting?
In the spirit of this article, is there a way not to constantly poke your index finger when doing delicate thread work? 🙂 I’m not sure how people even manage the size 30 and smaller crochet cotton and the tiny stitches.
Wow, I think such specific medical codes are dumb and pointless, no offence to you Rachel.
Haha! This made my day, I think it’s so funny! I’ll have to tell the gals in my crochet club about this. I can see it now…yelling “Code Y93D1!” every time one of us gets a hand cramp or yarn burn from pull those rougher yarns.
@Dana – I totally know what you mean. It’s pretty tricky crocheting with those thinner threads. I once tried to crochet with a thimble on my finger, but it didn’t go so well. Maybe you can try wrapping a band-aid around your finger.
A few years ago, I injured myself with one of the tiny steel hooks I was using with crochet thread to repair straps on a sundress.
Halfway through, I laid my project down on the floor to do something else. Later I came back and swept it aside while looking for something I thought was under it.
Horror of horrors, the hook got jammed into my hand! It didn’t really hurt but I did hear it punch through my skin.
After a few minutes of jiggling the hook, there was blood. And pain. And finally, tears. My daughter woke my husband up and he drove me to the E.R. It was my birthday eve.
The dress I was working on was on the hook. I didn’t think to cut if off and it was balled up on the side of my hand. When I moved it to show the lady in admitting how the hook was stuck in my hand, her eyes got wide.
I waited about an hour to be seen… Throbbing pain wracked my hand. 🙁
The doctor cut my dress and gave me several compliments on my crocheted work.
Then she stabbed me with a needle (to administer the anesthetic) and tried to wiggle the hook out. Ouch!
She realized she needed to operate. 🙁
When I saw her pick up the scalpel, I turned my head.
Thankfully my hand was numb enough at that point. I didn’t feel a thing and she presented my good-as-new hook to me after she bandaged my itty bitty incision.
Since then, I have been manic about knowing where ALL my steel hooks are at all times and I no longer leave my thread WIPs on the floor.
@Lauren Thanks for the tip. I’ll try to wrap my poor finger in a strip of cloth or something in absence of a band-aid. Maybe stuff a bit of cotton underneath it for padding.
@Shelli That sounds so scary! I’ve never done this, but I have put mechanical pencils into a bag without first retracting the point and then gone rummaging blindly around. Ouch. T_T That really really hurts when you get yourself under the nail. I love sewing too, so it’s my sharps that I keep an eagle eye on – paranoid about losing them on the floor. What I do is keep needles on a magnet. My happens to be a sharpener so it’s fine to have on the desk all the time.
Been thinking of a hook case but ack, too many things to do. So! Right now all my hooks live in an empty peanut butter jar and they’re happy and visible there. ^_^
This is no laughing matter!! I was trying to finish a project and spent about 3 hours each evening crocheting. I ended up getting ‘trigger finger’ in my thumb and had to have surgery then about 3 months of rehab. Trigger finger is VERY painful. The pain was so terrible I couldnt’s use my hand. I’m still very careful about how much time I spend corcheting and if I even start to get a hand cramp I don’t crochet for about 2 weeks.
Day after Christmas several years ago, I was trying to follow the directions and put a grip tube on my small steel crochet hook. I often just plunge in without reading the instructions, but I actually tried this time! Wouldn’t go on the shaft. I folded up a tea towel to put on the hook end and tried to push the hook’s shaft into the grip. Yes, I’d put liquid soap on it, too.
Next thing I knew, the hook was sticking up through the tea towel AND my index finger!! “Houston, we have a problem!” were the words I said to my husband. A trip to the ER in 2′ of snow, ER staff coming in to check out the unusual accident, x-rays to be sure no bones were broken, tetanus shot, snip the hook off and pull out the shaft….what a way to spend 12/26! 🙂
Don’t think I’ve used a steel hook since, let alone that dratted grip! 🙂
Those sound so painful! I have fibromyalgia. I usually crochet and watch a movie at night. Some nights my muscles hurt so bad so I do less crocheting but it is still in my lap if I feel better. 🙂
Rachel, I knew medical coding was going to be getting even more specific soon, but didn’t realized it would get this detailed! I’m a billier for a hospital and I’ll be looking forward to seeing this in a couple of years at work!
I had a neighbor years ago who went to the doctor for an injury to her shoulder from crocheting to tight. It wouldn’t be fun to me if it was causing me that much pain. My back and shoulders do tighten up from time to time, but that tells me that I need to step away for a while then come back to crochet again later.
I actually had to give up crocheting for several years due to arthritis in my hands. I had started back about two years ago when I retired and just worked through the pain. Now my right hand is actually doing OK. And if it hurts I give it a rest.
I’m one to cut my finger along with the yarn when I’m snipping it off but thankfully I haven’t had to take a trip to er.
I have gotten tendonitis — does that count? I have gotten poked in the backside with a hook, but the tendonitis was the only crochet (or crochet/music) injury that landed me in the MD (and PT’s) office.
I had to put my crochet needle down for 4 months due to “crocheter’s elbow” aka tennis elbow. I only started crocheting in January and threw myself into it whole-hog, so much so that by the end of May I had injured the tendons in my elbow due to the repetitive motion of crocheting! After a summer off and lots of ibuprofen, I have learned the lesson of moderation and save my crochet for the weekends and take frequent breaks to stretch out my right arm to prevent reinjuring myself! I love crochet, but this getting old ain’t for sissies! 😉
My hands cramp all the time when I’m crocheting. Fortunately , not bad enough to need a trip to the ER. Using the bamboo-handled hooks helps reduce the cramping, but I still can’t use anything smaller than a G hook. Cramping is why I had to give up knitting; I couldn’t hold the needles any longer. Even when machine sewing my hand will cramp. Then I have to stop sewing and massage my hand for a while. I once put the sewing machine needle thru my finger, but I felt there was nothing they could do at the hospital that I couldn’t do at home. I cleaned it out and bandaged it; it healed fine.
Judi: I, too, have arthritis in my hands; specifically my thumbs. I’ve found that crocheting actually helps keep my hands more limber. They say exercise is the best medicine for arthritis; it works when that exercise is crochet. Resting when necessary lets us crochet that much more.
Wow, and I thought this stuff only happened to me! LOL
Bully for the new code. I bet we’ll hear and see that one more often as our addiction spreads to the new generations to come. Seeing the rebirth of crochet a few years ago and how well it’s moving full steam forward, I doubt it will go hiding behind closed doors again 🙂
As for injuries, I’ve had the beading needle i was using to add beads to a crochet piece go right through my finger. I was being good, wearing a thimble, but there was a weak spot on the thimble and I happened to have it directly over the top of the beading needle so when I applied pressure to the needle, instead of going through the fabric, it went through the thimble and through my finger! Painful doesn’t come close, I actually felt nauseous for a moment and the lights dimmed. I very calmly withdrew the needle, ignoring the pain, and then removed the thimble from my finger. I had a tiny hole going through the pad and a tiny dot of blood forming where the needle came to rest on the underside of my fingernail. Now, you’d think I’d learned something from that experience… nope, I had to do this to myself several more times before I clued in to start using a leather thimble like I use when doing native beadwork. LOL Even the thinnest beading needle will not go through a good leather thimble. 🙂
This post brings back memories. When I was in high school in home ec, I was making a potholder from thread. I was walking in the hallway at school and slipped. When I got up, my #7 crochet hook was stuck right above my right knee. I calmly took it out( I wasn’t a nurse’s daughter for nothing, ) and went to the nurse who freaked out and took me to the ER for a tetanus shot! My knee was sore that night, but back to normal by the next day. After that, I was careful as to how I stored my crochet hook
Thanks everyone!!!
@Margaret, I used the Bernet baby grey marble colored yarn. It is indeed 2 colors, grey and white twisted together but as one strand of yarn.
Hahaha…I did! Last holiday season I crocheted so much I developed “tennis elbow” and finally had to give in and get a cortisone shot!
Just heard about this code while attending a CGOA chapter meeting at the Chain Link Conference in Greensboro NC this past weekend. What a hoot!
== I did once get “trigger finger” while crocheting just a little bit too long a time. Had my doctor check it out. He told me just to give my hand a rest and the condition would go away on its own. Wonder if he used this code on my health insurance form. (I got a similar trigger finger on my non-dominant (left) hand when repeatedly hammering in nails for a volunteer playground project in the early 2000’s. Wonder if there’s a code for hammering or volunteer injuries??
I get bad blisters where the hook rubs, so I crocheted myself some fingerless gloves.
I thought my story was unique. After reading some of these post I am happy I am not alone. One morning I was getting dress to go to work. I was putting on a belt and I needed another hole to make it fit better. I picked up a steel crochet hook size 7 or so and decided to make my own hole with the hook. I was holding the belt from the back underneath and pushing from the front. It was really hard trying to get throught the belt.
It finally when throught and then I realized it when through my finger too. So now I had a belt attached to my finger with a crochet hook. I tried to pull it out and I couldn’t. This was on a Saturday and my son was up early to go to his paintball game. I asked him if he could pull it out. He looked at it and said no way like I was crazy. So, now I had to wake up my husband and we had to got to the emergency room. I had to keep the belt up because i was pulling on the hook. So here I was walking into to the Hospital with this belt and hook in my finger. I guess they seen it all. They had to take a Xray to see how far it when in. Then they numbed it up and pulled it out. I was given a Tetanus shot. Which made my arm hot and swelled up. The shot was worst then the hook. It took over a week for my arm to go down from the swelling. Oh! those hooks are dangerous. We laugh about it now especially my Son he never did go to his game.
Lauren, hope this response gets through – my last attempt is in space with the astronaunts.
Have you tried a rubber finger instead of a thimble? I use one when doing a lot of hand sewing. The needle will eventually make small holes in the finger but you just get a new one. I prefer the brownish, laytex type. They’re much softer than the tinted rubber fingers.
No major crochet injuries aside from something like carpel tunnel. But when I was a dispatcher, I had to send out the ambulance one afternoon for a 9-year-old girl who had impaled a knitting needle through the back of her throat. Blech!
@Nancy, that’s a good idea! I didn’t even think of that. Where do you buy the rubber fingers at? Any sewing or craft store?
I accidentally stabbed my ankle with a knitting needle once. It didn’t bleed because there weren’t any vessels there big enough, but it was kind of sore for about a week.
And of course there is the typical elbow and wrist stiffness from knitting or crocheting for too long.
I had shoulder and arm pain from knitting. My massage therapist told me I needed to prop pillows to rest my arms on them. My kids loved learning about the codes.