No One Sees Me!

Back in September I had thumb surgery on my dominate hand---both hands actually but only one is bothering me now. It’s been bothering me since my first fall between Christmas and New Years and about the time I decided I needed to see my surgeon about it I fell the second time and all thoughts of my hand went by the wayside. Yes, heavy drugs and broken ribs trumped losing the pincer grip and fine motor skills in my thumb. I’ve dropped a few drinking glasses and I struggle to pick up mahjong titles or pills and buttoning clothing is a struggle. The bottom line my thumb is swollen and hot all the time and after viewing my x-rays the doctor says I have Skier’s Thumb also known as Gamer’s Thumb. "Oh goody," says the old woman who is sick of acquiring new aches and pains. My doctor described it as a “floating bone attached to a pulley (the ligment) that needs to go back on the other side of the joint.” See the x-ray up above..

Obviously you don’t have to ski or be a gamer to get this condition. It usually happens in a fall where you are griping a stick---hockey, bat, tennis rack or ski pole---when you go down. In my case during the first fall I tried to hold on a door jam and wrenched my thumb backward. If you're betting I’m headed back to surgery you could be right. My doctor takes the least evasive steps before putting you on his surgical table and in this case that means I’m doing a massive amount of Methylprednisone for a week---to get the swelling down---and I’m wearing a brace that goes half way up my lower arm. I’ll go back in a few weeks and we’ll decide what happens next. The success of this kind of surgery goes down if not performed in a “timely fashion” and I've passed that tipping point. Without surgery the condition will become chronic. "Oh goody," says again the old woman who wistfully wishes she could write a post about an old man who paid off a porn star and goes to jail. Could happen and that would make me as happy as a seagull with a French fry. (I wish I could take credit for that metaphor, but I can't.)

With the surgery my thumb will be immobilized for 5-6 weeks and I won’t get full use of my thumb for 3-4 months. If it was my non-dominate hand it wouldn't be a big deal to live with a thumb you can't trust and it seems petty to sweat such a small thing when others have bigger health issues on their plates. But we each have to play the cards we're dealt. One thing is for sure: I need to buy some plastic drinking glasses.

I also left the doctor’s office with a back brace. During my first fall I ended up with my left lower leg completely black and blue and now it swells occasionally and gives my artificial knee joint a feeling like restless leg syndrome in the evening when I first get off my feet. He took x-rays of my spine and neck and he’s saying the leg issue is my coming from the crushed vertebrates in my lower back. Got three there and one in my neck as well, C-6. We’ve known about them for a long time but he thinks the fall might have agitated them. I hate the looks of that brace but the first time I wore it that night I didn’t get any of the craziness in my leg nor the bedtime needles and pins feeling in my feet that I’ve had for several years. Finger crossed that's repeated in coming nights.

Yesterday afternoon after leaving the doctor’s office I decided to bite the bullet and go down to lunch here on the continuum care campus wearing my wrist and back braces. The back brace goes from under my bra to my waist in front and dips a couple inches below in the back…hard not to notice. Or so I thought. All total I passed by six people in the lobby and we greeted each other and I sat with four others during lunch and not one mentioned the braces! I didn’t even see any eyes wandering over my “accessories.” No one really sees me! The hand brace I could understand no one noticing that because last year between the two trigger thumb surgeries I was in a smaller wrist brace for quite a while. But I’ve never worn a back brace. 

Is everyone just so used to me wearing weirdly out of date clothing that they don’t bother looking below my neck? I was wearing gray pants and a gray top and I tried to decide if others could have thought I was just wearing a too-ugly-to-mention new outfit with a wide black belt. That lovely thing has the feel of a cartoon character’s jet pack strapped to my body only without the cord to pull to take off flying. The hard plastic part has a pocket in it for an ice or heated pad.... "or snacks," says the old woman who went to Traders Joe's today and came home with a bag full of dietary sin.

The Velcro on the wrist brace keeps getting stuck to the side of the back brace and it makes the ripping sound when I pull my arm loose. Tomorrow I'm thinking about going down to lunch to test if others can hear me. It's either that or I'm leaving the back brace in the apartment and just wearing it when I'm at home because it's truly an ugly accessory and my natural body is fat enough.

I'll end this post with a tip on how to get lint out of the hooked side of Velcro. (My Velcro quickly filled up with pink bathrobe fuzz.) Their website says to use an old tooth brush and it works well but I feel like I need to slap a label on it, to explain to my nieces why they'll find a tooth brush on my computer desk after I die. It's the handiest place to delint the Velcro on my braces during the "find my muse time" when I'm trying to write a blog. ©