The Switch helped a man detect a tumour in his hand

A programmer living in Sydney, Australia, has attributed the Nintendo Switch for letting him detect a potentially cancerous tumour in his hand.

Writing in a post on Reddit, Chris revealed that he started noticing a severe pain in his hand when playing Mario Kart 8 on the system, notably when the pad vibrated as he collected coins. This would start in his right palm and work its way up to the first joint in the index finger.

For those unaware, the Switch’s Joy-Con controller employs a special kind of feedback called HD Rumble, and in Mario Kart’s case sends a short, powerful burst when hoovering up coins. Despite causing him a lot of pain however, Chris wrote it off as repetitive strain injury as a result of his programming job.

‘I’m a programmer, and it was a pretty busy time at work, so I just put it down to [a repetitive stress injury] or something similar,’ Chris told Kotaku over email. ‘I thought maybe it’d go after a few quieter days.’ He didn’t tell anyone about the issue, and eventually the pain got so bad that he stopped playing the Switch. Oddly enough, playing Xbox One did not cause him any grief. 

Over time, a small bruise-like mark appeared in the area where the pain originated from, and after visiting the doctors, he was told to keep an eye on things. Six months down the line, and the mark developed into a small lump, and so he visited the doctors again and was told it was actually a tumour that has a five percent chance of being cancer. 

Chris is due to undergo surgery to remove the lump on Monday, but he firmly believes it’s down to the Switch that he was able to detect the problem so early. 

‘I definitely believe that if it hadn’t been for the Switch I wouldn’t have gone to the doctors until the mark started to raise from my palm months later,’ he said.