Injury from setting gripper?

[Gripperer]

Afternoon everyone, wondered if any of you had experienced the same, and could share your input. Not after medical advice (unless you're a doctor!).

One of my goals this year was to close the #2.5. In the grand scheme of things I'm pretty rubbish at grippers, and a short hand contributes to this.

To make up for the short hand, I really need to set that gripper hard. I nearly had it closed, but I've had to put things on hold and just do rep work with lighter grippers because I seem to have injured myself.

The injury is right where you would typically set using the index finger in the off hand, between the punching knuckle and the next most distal knuckle. I felt there was a pain a couple of weeks ago, and now playing with it I can feel a distinct lump inside that's on the bone, meaning it is fixed in position.

It's not tender to the touch until there's some heavier pressure, particularly with a hard object (I can squeeze it fairly hard between finger and thumb without pain). The finger strength itself seems fine, for example, it doesn't affect me if I hand from a door frame by my fingertips. So I think I can discount tendon, ligament or muscle.

What's strange to me is that I haven't experienced any swelling, bruising, stiffness, any pain at relaxation or anything else that I would associate with a fracture or even what they call a bone bruise. I don't even recall any distinct trauma, although in fairness, you know what it's like "in the zone," sometimes you feel a pain and forget about it.

All my uneducated instinct is telling me is that I've caused some kind of a bone spur over the course of a few weeks from trying to set using poor technique.

What do you guys think?