Helping Hand
It’s hand specialist visit day! Wish me luck for a definitive diagnosis, and hopefully, a plan toward fixing whatever is going wrong in there.
I think my brace has been helping in the last few days. I’ve been wearing it selectively, and when it is not on, trying to do normal activity with that hand, as much as possible. I’m noticing just enough improvement that I worry it won’t present well for diagnosis this morning. I may have found a way to self-treat this recent flare-up, but I still am hoping to learn why the thumb joint has been a chronic nuisance for the two years prior, especially if it is determined not to be the arthritis that I assumed it to be.
When you are feeling kind of punky because you have an “owie” hand that makes it hard to do pretty much everything that you can think of to do, you just might find yourself crashed out on a bed for a sulking nap. Either that, or the napping cat just looked so irresistible that I succumbed to joining him. Cyndie found the visual irresistible, and grabbed my camera.
That’s about as close as we can get to Mozyr, before he takes his leave. There’s no snuggling with that cat, yet.
Pequenita is another story. There’s no not snuggling with her. She walks right up on top of us, steps between our face and anything we happen to be doing, and demands hands, pushing her nose under our fingers, while kneading our chest.
She will probably be as happy as me to have my left hand be freed from pain, and available for full strength use again.
Relative Something 
Re: I’m noticing just enough improvement that I worry it won’t present well for diagnosis this morning – you mean you are worried that it is getting better on its own:-) As you know, time heals all – although the mend may be stronger than the original bone as is the case in the bone that broke below my little finger, for example.
By the way, I don’t know whether you ever bought the book, They Eighty-Dollar Campion, but Harry’s outstanding achievements with Snowman were not undermined by breaking no end of fingers in the process:-) All mended with no special treatment and functioned as good as new. This is essential to understand as our hands tend to define us and our actions, in particular, don’t they? Your strategy of gradually working the hand back into normal use sounds like the best course of action.
Ian Rowcliffe
April 18, 2013 at 7:51 am
I will continue to experiment with self-treatment to alleviate pain, but, unfortunately, this is unlikely to get better on its own. For two years now, it had continued to gradually get worse.
johnwhays
April 18, 2013 at 11:24 pm
You also mention your ‘brace’, which I presume is something to keep the thumb in position. That it has helped suggests that something inside needs to mend and requires a ‘fixed’ position to do so. The thumb is the most flexible finger of all, so you might even need to have it put in a cast/splint. I read, “A cortisone shot into the sore area helps most people – at least temporarily.”
Of course, you know what has caused this, don’t you? So many mind-blowing things have happened to you over the last couple of years that you have been pinching yourself to check that it is not all a dream:-) The solution: just believe in your awesome life!
Ian Rowcliffe
April 19, 2013 at 7:41 am
I believe!
johnwhays
April 20, 2013 at 8:25 am