Tag Archives: medical yuckies

Bending the Elbow

24 Wednesday Mar 2021

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Well, gosh. Something new has gone amiss with my body, and I don’t quite know what to do about it. But my neurologist does, and that’s something. And they caught it early enough, I gather, and that’s something else.

Several months ago, I noticed that the last two fingers on my right hand (ring and pinky) were ever-so-slightly numb and tingly. As in always. Permanently. No matter what I was doing. “Hmm,” I thought. “There are Things that start by eating away at the outside, like a kid with a giant cookie. I should look into this.” So eventually I did, and eventually they saw me, and this morning I went in and had my doc use me as a pincushion and zap me with a teeny little cattle prod. (Remember that dead frog in Biology? Yep. You’re there.) The zapping ranges from interesting (skinny areas) to somewhat painful (fatter areas which require more juice to reach their target), but the test doesn’t take long, so I survived. The general hmm and I suspected as much thing added to my main hypothesis, which was that I was imagining it. The numbness is very slight, after all.

However, I learned to my dismay that I have a rather nasty case of something called ulnar nerve compression, or cubital tunnel syndrome. (Neither of these is catchy enough to warrant a $60 elbow brace. Just sayin’.) Between computer usage and art, I keep my elbow bent most of the day, and it is mushing down on the nerve. Eventually this will lead to (seriously here for a moment) my losing motor control of the hand. So yeah, something’s got to give.

There’s the brace, and there’s ulnar nerve transposition surgery, which I’m being referred to for a consultation at this point. From the medicos’ POV this sounds and looks (thank you, Interwebs) scarier than it really is, so I’m not fretting about that, especially as the neuro is on the fence about whether I’m a candidate yet.

(I looked at standing desks, and none of them look like they’d fit my sprawling two monitor lifestyle, to say nothing of their devouring my bank account. [Besides, I’m on Zoom for twelve hours a week.] Nix on that, then.)

Rather, I will have to try to change my behaviors, and as we all know from dieting and jogging, this is the rub. I’m typing this at arms’ length, with the offending elbow on the cushy thing, instead of my usual posture of being choked up on the desk with the edge cutting into that very spot. The brace is arriving today and will be my faithful little friend for the foreseeable future, so I get to see life left-handed. But not forever—and I am oh-so-grateful that this was caught in time.

Now with Extra Titanium!

12 Tuesday Apr 2016

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So, for those of you who missed it, here’s the update/explanation for my absence: On February 8, I had my right knee replaced. Even to me, this still sounds like a “meh” in the world of bodily modification–it’s not even as if knees are interesting gooshy bits: They’re dry and chewy and we don’t even notice what they do unless they stop doing it. Well, wrongo, Mary Lou. Total knee replacement is a Big Fat Hairy Deal, considered to be one of the most painful surgeries out there with one of the longest recoveries. Everybody told me this beforehand, with the result that I was terrified out of my tiny brain.

It’s exactly 9 weeks later, and despite having told myself beforehand that the several months of recovery would be GREAT for my writing, I have only now re-surfaced to tell y’all about it. Writing is hard when you’re distracted by pain and the need to move it/ice it/be gracious to all the medical professionals in your face.

Where to begin? Well, for those of you who are sciencey, this link from my orthopods will give you pictures of the anatomy in detail. For the rest of you, they basically sawed off the cartilage-bearing parts of my knee joint off (what cartilage I had left, this being The Problem) and replaced it with this shiny titanium baby:

fake knee

(Only I think my spacer is ceramic. I’ll have to remember to ask.) This did indeed hurt quite a lot, I’m not going to lie, but it also was NOT the-most-horrible-pain-I-have-ever-had. (That trophy is shared between kidney stones and my worst menstrual cramps: I am a pain professional!) I had both local injections (to help with the immediate pain post-surgery) and a spinal with so much sedation that I didn’t know a thing until it was over–I was as much a non-participant as if I’d had a general, with less recovery yuckies.

The physical therapy team at the hospital showed up on schedule that very afternoon to get my slacker butt out of bed so I could stand on the new knee starting immediately. (I don’t know why they do this. I will ask my real PT when I see her this Friday at my first outpatient visit. Bean counters should note that yes, outpatient PT only starts at the two month point.) This standing thing is made challenging because pain, and also because those numbing injections make you super wobbly. PT don’t care; PT don’t play. There is a fairly brief window where it’s mobility v. scar tissue formation.

This did lead to one of the most painful medical things I’ve ever had done (up there with endometrial biopsies), which was the main PT forcing my knee back on Day 3. This produced a level of screaming and crying that embarrassed me a bit but was totes called for–and I am NOT a wussy. (In fact, I once got sent home from critical care during one kidney stone because I was too controlled about it–they didn’t figure on it being my umpteenth stone. I had an infection, btw.) This range-of-motion thing isn’t quiiiiite the emergency they claim, as the surgeon bends the knee (duh, to make sure it works) before closing. No other PT person did this to me (and none will again, bwah ha ha).

However, it did put the fear ah Gawd inta me bigtime, and I hustled my butt into all those knee bending exercises out of fear that I would once again fail to please. (Bear in mind that I was out of my gourd on pain meds, etc., so was not my usual spunky Advocacy Lass self for quite a while.) As of now I am at 110 degrees of flexion (my heel almost touches my butt), and can straighten the thing out almost completely! (This translates to “rock star.”)

The four and a half days in the original hospital were the worst part of the whole thing. Not so much pain, but I have a well-behaved cat’s reaction to Things Not My Usual Litter Pan, and the food was atrocious beyond belief. The room was claustrophobic, and in the middle of this whole adventure, despite support socks that cut into my fat little legs and annoying booties that auto-inflated, I got blood clots in my lungs. (Maybe not from the surgery. Hematological workup pending next month.) Not too seriously, but I’ll be on anti-coagulant meds for a while to come. Sigh. I miss you, Vitamin K rich veggies.

And this was one of the best hospitals in Boston. Sigh again. But, seeing as I had 37 stairs awaiting me at home, my next stop was rehab, about which more later.