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urbandruidI'm sorry this is going to be so scattered and all over the place, but that's just the way it is. I haven't written for too long, and there's too much going on.
Practically all semester (since the end of August, anyway) I've been doing exactly what the doctors told me to do, and trying really hard not to do what I was told not to do. I've been taking it easy on the typing and especially on the writing things out longhand. I've tried to moderate my computer use, and people who know me know that that's a lot to ask.
And honestly? At the risk of fucking my hand up even more, I just- I can't do it anymore. I'm done. I'm tired and I'm stressed, it's two in the morning and I'm not sleeping, and I need this. I need to write. Need to do something.
Because, really? Behaving myself isn't helping as much as you might think. Long story short- I smacked the hell out of my right wrist in late August. I figured I'd broken it, hairline fracture or something. As if any of my medical problems could be that normal. Nope. It turned out to have aggravated something I've probably had for a long time, called a ganglion cyst. Which after taking a while to figure out what it was, the nice doc at the school health center stabbed a needle into and drained in October. And we figured, okay, the hand situation will get better now, right? The swelling will go down and the pain will go away, and it'll just- not be such a pain in the ass. Yeah. Didn't happen. Instead the swelling got worse, two fingers and my thumb started to go numb.
And I started to drop stuff. Just- sitting there and watching it go, like someone else had dropped it. Except it was me. Because suddenly I have no control over my own body, or at least my right hand.
So, now I have a new specialist for my collection. Orthopedist #2. Ortho #1 does knees and shoulders, I needed a hand specialist. So. I saw him... like a month ago, I think? Got myself scheduled for an (yet another) MRI and a nerve conduction test, because in addition to Return of the Cyst from Hell, he thinks I have carpal tunnel. Too.
So, Chris, you ask, do you have carpal tunnel? No clue. Because I don't see the doc again until the 4th of December. Yeah. So I have two weeks from this past Tuesday to go. Hanging out with my falling-apart brace from the student health center at school, hoarding the painkillers the doc there gave me for the really bad days.
Wondering if I'm going to need one hand surgery, or two. The number of surgeries I actually want? Zero.
And on top of it, one of the main ways I calm myself down, one of the main ways I keep myself together and just cope with things... is writing. Which I'm supposed to do as little of as possible. Which, yeah, I've been trying. And I just can't do it anymore. I'm typing with my brace on now, and it's slower than I'm used to, and I'm making more mistakes, but at least I'm getting some of this out. Other than talking to my new therapist, or my best friend at school, and my mom, I haven't been able to get a lot of it out. And there's a limit to how much shit I feel like I can dump on my friend L and my mom.
It's been a long semester, my first at real college. And the second or third week this happens, the start of the hand saga, and things have been insane ever since. I got to have someone else take my notes for a month when we thought the hand was broken, but after that- with nobody being able to say for sure what was wrong yet, there was no doctor to sign the Disabled Students form. Nobody to say, let's take a little pressure off this woman, let's make her do a few less things with the hand of doom. I have the form, which I'll make the ortho do something with when I see him in December. But right now I'm stuck doing everything. The only saving grace is that in the one class where I really have to take notes, he uses PowerPoint, and puts the slides online for us to print out. So I only have to write down everything that isn't on the slides.
Still, on the days when the hand is really bad, you can't imagine how much it hurts to write. How much it hurts to fill in the little bubbles on Scrantons for my tests. And thank GOD there are no essay questions.
My psych prof has us doing 'mind maps', these drawings to illustrate the concepts from our reading in our two textbooks. You ever try to draw with (probable) carpal tunnel and a cyst on your wrist? It's a bitch.
The whole thing is a bitch, to be perfectly honest. I'm unbelievably tired of all of it. I am finally, finally on break for Thanksgiving. I've only been looking forward to this for months, because dragging your ass through six units of upper division classes and learning your way around a new college is enough fun without the stress of constant, chronic pain. And the stress of the whole unknown 'what the hell is wrong with me this time and what are they going to have to do to me to fix it?'
But at least I've got some time now, and I'm going to try to do some fun stuff with that time. I've discovered I can't just not write, so I'm going to try typing in moderation (she says, working on this huge journal post, but whatever) and see how that goes. I've gotta do something, you know?
Practically all semester (since the end of August, anyway) I've been doing exactly what the doctors told me to do, and trying really hard not to do what I was told not to do. I've been taking it easy on the typing and especially on the writing things out longhand. I've tried to moderate my computer use, and people who know me know that that's a lot to ask.
And honestly? At the risk of fucking my hand up even more, I just- I can't do it anymore. I'm done. I'm tired and I'm stressed, it's two in the morning and I'm not sleeping, and I need this. I need to write. Need to do something.
Because, really? Behaving myself isn't helping as much as you might think. Long story short- I smacked the hell out of my right wrist in late August. I figured I'd broken it, hairline fracture or something. As if any of my medical problems could be that normal. Nope. It turned out to have aggravated something I've probably had for a long time, called a ganglion cyst. Which after taking a while to figure out what it was, the nice doc at the school health center stabbed a needle into and drained in October. And we figured, okay, the hand situation will get better now, right? The swelling will go down and the pain will go away, and it'll just- not be such a pain in the ass. Yeah. Didn't happen. Instead the swelling got worse, two fingers and my thumb started to go numb.
And I started to drop stuff. Just- sitting there and watching it go, like someone else had dropped it. Except it was me. Because suddenly I have no control over my own body, or at least my right hand.
So, now I have a new specialist for my collection. Orthopedist #2. Ortho #1 does knees and shoulders, I needed a hand specialist. So. I saw him... like a month ago, I think? Got myself scheduled for an (yet another) MRI and a nerve conduction test, because in addition to Return of the Cyst from Hell, he thinks I have carpal tunnel. Too.
So, Chris, you ask, do you have carpal tunnel? No clue. Because I don't see the doc again until the 4th of December. Yeah. So I have two weeks from this past Tuesday to go. Hanging out with my falling-apart brace from the student health center at school, hoarding the painkillers the doc there gave me for the really bad days.
Wondering if I'm going to need one hand surgery, or two. The number of surgeries I actually want? Zero.
And on top of it, one of the main ways I calm myself down, one of the main ways I keep myself together and just cope with things... is writing. Which I'm supposed to do as little of as possible. Which, yeah, I've been trying. And I just can't do it anymore. I'm typing with my brace on now, and it's slower than I'm used to, and I'm making more mistakes, but at least I'm getting some of this out. Other than talking to my new therapist, or my best friend at school, and my mom, I haven't been able to get a lot of it out. And there's a limit to how much shit I feel like I can dump on my friend L and my mom.
It's been a long semester, my first at real college. And the second or third week this happens, the start of the hand saga, and things have been insane ever since. I got to have someone else take my notes for a month when we thought the hand was broken, but after that- with nobody being able to say for sure what was wrong yet, there was no doctor to sign the Disabled Students form. Nobody to say, let's take a little pressure off this woman, let's make her do a few less things with the hand of doom. I have the form, which I'll make the ortho do something with when I see him in December. But right now I'm stuck doing everything. The only saving grace is that in the one class where I really have to take notes, he uses PowerPoint, and puts the slides online for us to print out. So I only have to write down everything that isn't on the slides.
Still, on the days when the hand is really bad, you can't imagine how much it hurts to write. How much it hurts to fill in the little bubbles on Scrantons for my tests. And thank GOD there are no essay questions.
My psych prof has us doing 'mind maps', these drawings to illustrate the concepts from our reading in our two textbooks. You ever try to draw with (probable) carpal tunnel and a cyst on your wrist? It's a bitch.
The whole thing is a bitch, to be perfectly honest. I'm unbelievably tired of all of it. I am finally, finally on break for Thanksgiving. I've only been looking forward to this for months, because dragging your ass through six units of upper division classes and learning your way around a new college is enough fun without the stress of constant, chronic pain. And the stress of the whole unknown 'what the hell is wrong with me this time and what are they going to have to do to me to fix it?'
But at least I've got some time now, and I'm going to try to do some fun stuff with that time. I've discovered I can't just not write, so I'm going to try typing in moderation (she says, working on this huge journal post, but whatever) and see how that goes. I've gotta do something, you know?
