Pains in my fingers

Question I have been suffering from pains in my fingers and sometimes my toes on and off for the last nine months. It feels like they are bruised and it is worse when I first wake in the morning. It has been getting steadily worse and now my middle and index finger and my thumb on both hands are affected. My line of work is heavy and manual, but I have changed jobs a couple of months ago to a different type of manual work. I build cars and now don't use my fingers specifically, but rather my whole hand. However this change in work pattern has not affected the pain at all. Also when I had time at home, on holiday not doing much, the pain didn't change. I went to see my doctors about it a few months ago and they did blood tests and X-rays to rule out broken bones, rheumatism and arthritis but couldn't find anything. They thought I'd probably hurt it at work, but didn't mention what to do if the pain persisted or if it came back. I was wondering if you could advise me about what to do next. Answer The medical term for this is polyarthralgia - which actually just means lots of painful joints. If it was months ago when the investigations took place and things have actually got worse since then, then the most appropriate thing to do is go back to the doctor who did the initial investigations. It's absolutely fine for the doctor to do the investigations, find no abnormalities and leave it at that on the first occasion. But if things haven't settled and even deteriorated in months, then he'll now want repeat and possibly do further investigations to find a cause. No further action at this point would not be appropriate. Yours sincerely The NetDoctor Medical Team netdoctor.co.uk