In this month’s WFSB Great Day CT segment we meet Stephanie Reitz who has been typing since she was 13 years old, once for fun and then as part of her job as a reporter and spokesperson for the University of Connecticut.  Pain in her finger and knuckle lead her to the UConn Health Hand Center where orthopedic surgeon Dr. Joel Ferreira, diagnosed arthritis in the tip of her finger joint, the most common location in the hand.

She had surgery shortly after for that finger and the pain was gone. Reitz began bowling competitively and when she began having issues with other fingers that was not only affecting her work but her important past time, she reached back out to Ferreira who worked around her bowling season and with two more surgeries fixed the three affected fingers.

At the UConn Health Center, Ferreira and his colleagues specialize in hands, wrists and elbows and offer a variety of solutions for problems and many can be treated without surgery.

“I think you can get used to anything, but you shouldn’t get used to pain and that’s what I have learned through this process,” says Reitz.