jinjifore

I had my penultimate orthopedic visit today. It went very well, and I'm on track to have the pins removed on May 11. Yay!

There was only one hiccup. The doctor had initially intended to remove the cast and put me in a splint for two weeks. This would have the advantage that I would be able to take showers without wrapping a plastic bag around my arm...and not much else. I wouldn't really be able to take off the splint otherwise, and would have to be very, very careful so as not to break the pins in my wrist. I am not a very, very careful person. When I expressed this to the doctor, he asked, "Well, do you just want another cast?" and I said, "That would probably be best."

So, I have Bright Pink Cast #2 (they didn't have purple or yellow, the other two colors that Boo had requested, so I reverted to the number one color choice). It hasn't been too bad wearing the other casts, and I would certainly rather put up with two more weeks of plastic wrap in the shower rather than risk breaking the pins. I'll have the cast on for two weeks, then I'll go to the doctor and get it removed the Wednesday before the surgery. Presumably I can go for five days in a splint without damaging myself. We'll see. :)

Note to self:

If you haven't driven in a month, and therefore haven't drunk your regular post-school-delivery regimen of coffee, it's entirely possible that when you do test your cast-impaired driving ability by going to the coffee shop and drinking a large coffee at four in the afternoon, you will find yourself writing journal posts at 5:45am.

Just FYI.

I have a new cast. It's about half the size and a third the weight of the post-op splint/cast. It is also bright pink because my daughter asked if I was getting a pink cast and I said no (because I seriously had no idea that casts came in pink.) I'll apparently be getting the chance to experiment with other colors as well, because the cast will be changed every couple of weeks.

Healing seems to be proceeding. The doctor took out the stitches, and x-rays showed that the pins seemed to in the right place. The new cast leaves my fingers completely free, so as soon as I work out the post-op swelling and stiffness I'm hoping I can return to two-handed as opposed to one-fingered typing.

I'm still having to take quite a bit of pain medication, but I can also tell that, as promised, the post-op pain is rapidly dwindling. I'm hoping to be off the pain meds sooner rather than later, and I also hope to be driving again soon. All in all, things are looking up.

When I went to the physical therapist last week, I'd increased my range of motion by about 30 degrees. This is very, very happy news. :) We'll see how it goes with the surgeon Thursday.

My new nimbleness did not, however, keep me from losing my grip on my debit card and sending it sliding over the dashboard and neatly into that tiny, tiny gap between the windshield and the dashboard. Seriously, it freakin' disappeared down there. Fortunately, I was using an ATM at a bank branch, so after I'd spent about two minutes realizing that there was no way I would ever get it out of there (barring the invention of a Plastic Magnet), I walked into the branch and got a new card. Luckily, the glass below the dash is tinted, so I don't have to see my card wedged down there mocking me.

Side Note: Part of my physical therapy excerises are done with a ball, so I bought an inexpensive substitute for the squishy rubber one they had. Boo, of course, feels that the purpose of a pink, blue and purple swirled toy ball is to be played with, so we laid out the rules about the ball never leaving Mama's room, and always being returned to Mama's chair. Naturally, the first time I turn around, my *husband* has nicked the ball and is playing with it in his office.

Also, a memo to Torchwood fandom: Glenn Miller. G-L-E-N-N.

This is being typed by my helpful husband.

As I mentioned in my last entry, two months ago, I fell and sprained my wrist over Thanksgiving. I have just been back to the doctor for a third follow-up and my options are apparently surgery or waiting--again--to see what happens. Since my arm does not seem to have gotten any better in the last two months, I suspect surgery is in my future.

I wanted to update to let people know why I haven't posted. I know that this isn't exactly unusual for me, but I have been reading and following and desperately wanting to join in the conversations. Hopefully I'll be back to typing (and knitting and writing things and being able to using my right hand) before too long.

I'm consulting a surgeon on Thursday and I will dictate any pertinent details to my minion for transcription when the time comes.

Take care everyone! :-)

Today is mine and Albert's 18th wedding anniversary.

Here's Keith Olbermann to explain why I won't be taking that fact for granted again:

( Special Comment on Proposition Eight--Gay Marriage is a Question of Love )

( Transcript )

Well, crap. I made an appointment to donate blood this morning, but instead I woke up with a sore throat. I did wallow around in denial for a while, but then I sucked it up and admitted to myself that the Red Cross doesn't *want* my infected blood, even if it is O-.

I'm especially bummed because between the three bouts of bronchitis, the feeling crappy after the bronchitis, the feeling crappy before the bronchitis and in general feeling crappy between the bronchitis, it's been well over a year since I donated. Still, there's always next week. :)

In the good news department, my service appointment for my car only cost me $425. You may wonder why this is good news. ( I will tell you )

ETA: Finally located the thermometer and took my temperature. 99.7. I don't think the Red Cross wants me today.

One day, I will post about this stuff before it's nearly all over. Honest.

So, for the last couple of months I've had some nasty carpal tunnel symptoms. I haven't been able to knit at all, *sob!* or type more than a few sentences at a time (you will possibly note that nearly all of my posts of late have been heavily comprised of copied and pasted templates). I went to the doctor about three weeks ago, and he said that I had all the classic symptoms of carpal tunnel...except that my outer two fingers were also becoming numb (though not at the same time as the thumb and first two fingers). To make sure that he knew what was going on, he ordered a nerve conduction test to determine which nerves, if any, might be damaged. The results would determine if I a) had carpal tunnel or b) problems with my ulnar nerve or c) both and d) possibly give some indication of whether or not I needed surgery.

Well, the test results came in yesterday, and they were negative. My nerves were in tip-top shape, no sign of damage. I will add that the test hurt like a son of a b%$#@!.

(I was going to say something else, but my mother reads this journal and despite what I heard her say the other night while she was dealing with her audio software I would like to maintain the fantasy that she still thinks I don't swear.)

"WTF?! Am I going crazy and making this up?" thought I.

"WTF?! Go see a specialist," said my doctor.

So, at 8:15 this morning I went to an orthopedist. He told me that about 20% of carpal tunnel patients have normal nerve conduction tests (Ah ha!), and the good news is that those patients--if they do have carpal tunnel--can often be cured with a shot of a steroid cocktail. "Shoot me up," I said.

The doctor says that I should feel some improvement within a couple of days (?!!!), and I'm scheduled for a follow-up visit in four weeks.

The LibraryThing process is proceeding. I've entered 3,000 books now.

I've moved from working from the card catalog to the actual books. While I was unable to get up and down the stairs, the cards were very useful. I could just lie in bed and work off them and when I got sleepy--bed! But since the catalog isn't complete, and since the CueCat scanner makes it about 10,000 times easier to just scan the barcodes rather than typing off crappy dot-matrix printouts--where I may or may not have written down the correct ISBN ten years ago--I learned that it was quicker to just work from the shelves.

I have all the hardbacks done now, except for the oversize ones and the ones that are mixed in with my husband's books. I did the hardbacks first because I have a lot of old and unusual books that I knew would require more research and possibly manual entry. From there I've moved to the one bookshelf I have of non-science fiction, non-mystery paperbacks and paperback-sized hardbacks, for pretty much the same reason.

Some observations: I have close to a hundred books that aren't shared by any other members, and about two hundred and fifty others that are shared by fewer than ten others. Some of them aren't suprising. Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word : Money, Images, and Reference in Late Medieval Poetry is a good example. I'm a bit surprised that no one else shares The Writings of Medieval Women : An Anthology, though. And I'm kind of sad that no one else has The Alps as Seen by the Poets or Billy-Boy because they're both beautiful books and I'd like to think that someone else has had the opportunity to enjoy them.

According to my stats, my median book obscurity is currently 107, and my mean book obscurity is 590. This means that, on average, I share books with 590 other members. But half of my library is shared by 107 members or less, and half is shared by 107 or more. Kinda cool.

This will also be an interesting exercise in Total Book Estimates. For a while now I've been tossing around 4,500 as the number of books I have without having any real idea about the true totals, and now I'll have the chance to see how close I am. Based on how many books I've entered, and how many I estimate I have left, I think it's going to be pretty close.