Professional Super Smash Bros. Melee player Aziz "Hax" Al-Yami released an update on his ongoing medical issue Thursday, announcing that he is suffering from a calcified flexor carpi ulnaris (FCU) muscle in his forearm. This prohibits him from playing Smash without pain.
Hax has been inactive from competitive Smash play since April, when he took first place at Collision XIII in New Jersey.
The news comes as an update of a long string of well-known medical problems for Hax, who has struggled with various hand, wrist and forearm injuries over the course of the past year. He had hand surgery in 2015 and has recently become diagnosed with the FCU muscle issue.
In his blog, Hax, 22, claims that many surgeons in his home state of New York refuse to remove his FCU from his arm. The issue, he claims, is due to age; he says most doctors aren't comfortable with removing that part of his body since he is so young.
"I know for a fact that this is a surgery I need to have done," he claims in the blog. "You can live without your FCU tendon, but your flexion strength is compromised. As I've said to doctors myself: anything is better than the current situation I'm in. Yet they decline to take the case, saying things to me like 'it needs time to heal' when this condition has only worsened over the past 2.5 years. They don't offer me any sort of alternative; they just say goodbye to me and tell me they can't help."
Hax is one of several Smash players to suffer hand or wrist injuries over the course of their careers, likely due to the intense amount of pressure applied to their hands from playing the game. Fellow top pro Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman has spoken about his physical issues before but continues to play despite the pain.
