It's been a long time since I've posted, but I have a good excuse. I promise.
About a week after the marathon, I went under the knife. What began as a slight, nagging pain in my right wrist whenever I was in the push-up position got slowly worse over months and years. Eventually, it was hurting whenever I carried a heavy bag or even held the phone to my ear for a long time. Forget downward dog in yoga. An x-ray revealed nothing, but an MRI showed that I had several ganglion cysts and a small tear in a ligament in my wrist. So I scheduled a surgery to fix all this and showed up at the crack of dawn on November 13th to get it done. I was quite nervous the night before and all morning, and my panic peaked when I walked into the operating room. I wasn't wearing contacts and they'd made me take off my glasses, so I could hardly see as the nurse led me into a room filled with terrifying gadgets with a table at its center. Standing in the doorway, I started to tremble and nearly bolted, but figured that I wouldn't get far half-blind with no shoes on. Things were hairy at first. I climbed onto the table and felt obligated to make pleasant small talk with the distracted OR team while the trainee assigned to IV duty struggled. (Why I felt pressured to follow social norms while blind, gowned, strapped to a table, and terrified I can't tell you.) He couldn't get it into the back of my hand, and after about five minutes of jabbing and flicking had equal difficulty with several spots on the inside of my arm, eventually prompting the anesthesiologist to cluck sympathetically, "Oh, your poor vein!" But he hit pay dirt with the vein on the inside of my elbow at last. I remember saying, "Here it comes," and went out like a light as the powerful sedative kicked in.
My memories of the hours after surgery are hazy. They brought Ed to see me in the recovery room, and he reports that we had a conversation about a blister on my toe (leftover from the marathon), which I do not remember. I was wearing a different gown than I'd fallen asleep in, which was somewhat disconcerting, my hair net was gone, and my right arm was encased in a half cast (plaster on the bottom and cotton and ace bandages on the top) and completely numb from just below the shoulder on down thanks to a nerve block. I fell asleep again for a bit, then dressed with the help of Ed and the nurse, manually wrangling my arm into place, gleefully immodest about donning my undergarments in front of a stranger due to the sedative. I was wheeled to a cab and dozed on and off during the ride home. Ed helped me down the stairs to bed and I went right to sleep. I woke for a snack and hour later, then slept again for at least three more hours. My arm gradually regained feeling over the course of the evening. It hurt, but really not too much.
Modeling the foam thing. Usually it rested on a tabletop with my hand sticking straight up in the air - suspending it like this while standing sort of defeated its purpose. |
Stitch removal: less gross than expected. |
Heat wrap |
The surgery was much easier than I thought, and the recovery has been much more difficult, in that it has been slow. But I am making progress as far as flexibility and my scars are looking smaller and less noticeable. The swelling is also diminishing, though I'm told it will fluctuate a lot over the next few months.
My scars today, almost a month after surgery |
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