Being one-handed

Eighteen days ago I had surgery for osteoarthritis in my right hand.  The osteoarthritis was painful, but the surgery and recovery seem to be much worse.  The surgeon gave me a prescription for fifty-six pills of Oxycodone.  When we picked up the prescription, I said, "Fifty-six!!!!  This will last years!!!"  Ha,ha, WRONG!!!  My pills are just about gone; I feel compelled to add that the dosage was quite low and the instructions were to take 1 to 2 tablets every 4 to 6 hours for pain.  If you divide 56 pills by 18 days, you get 3.1 pills per day (just doing that math makes me want a pill).  The pain those first few days was rough; it would awaken me in the middle of the night.  I guess I am a wuss. 

 Worse, much worse, than the pain is the realization that I am pretty much helpless without my right hand...and I'm left-handed.  We don't think about all the everyday chores that require two hands.  For example, I have stopped wearing slacks that have zippers.  In a bathroom emergency (at my age, those are fairly frequent), slacks with elastic waistbands are recommended.  If I could, I would wear dresses and skirts and go commando; this is much less stressful until a strong breezes comes along.   

 I am struggling to type this.  I'm a pretty good typist when I have both hands...not so much with one.  Writing this blog helps with the "useless slug" factor of my recovery.  I feel pretty damned sorry for myself!!!   I can drive, but I have convinced myself that staying inside and close to the bathroom is best for me and everyone whose path I cross.  Thank God for my husband.  The poor man has suffered enough just by being married to me for 39 years.  Now he is cooking and cleaning and dealing with my intermittent bouts of debilitating self-pity.  He is more anxious than I am to get my hand back to full functionality.  He puts up with a lot.  I did notice, however, that he was a bit too excited about getting selected for jury duty.  Anything to get out of the house!!!  Poor guy.  

 Well, I feel better.  Time to go to the bathroom.  

Comments

  1. Marian BeamanMarch 12, 2020 at 1:44 PM

    You are the Erma Bombeck of comedo-tragedy. I would have laughed all the way through, but I didn't want to hurt your feelings. Tee-hee!

    I was prescribed painkillers when I had a cyst removed from my head. I took a few but they didn't do much good, maybe because they were Hydocodone, not Oxycodone. Oh, dear!

    Heal, my friend!
    And you will! :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. VictoriaMarch 15, 2020 at 5:43 AM

      Hi, Marian, sorry; I thought I had replied to you. Darned dysfunctional fingers!!! I can't thank you enough for your continued encouragement and support. You're a blogging rock star!!!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Memory Struggles

I don't know when, but at some point my memory began to fail.  I'm 69 years old now, so perhaps I should expect this.  I don't like it and I don't want to accept it.  Being the hypochondriac that I am (that's a whole other blog), I wanted to see if my brain was rotting...or whatever brains do when they are no longer fully functional.  My long suffering primary care doctor (the woman is a saint) ordered a brain MRI.  The results: "Very mild chronic small vessel ischemic changes of the supratentorial periventricular and subcortical white matter." Sure.  That sounded troubling to me, but my primary care doctor wasn't concerned.   On the positive side, it's interesting to see all the new sights everyday that apparently I have seen thousands of times before.  On  the one hand, it's nice to be happily surprised...a lot.  I ask my husband, "have we been here before?" to which he often replies, "countless times."  Hmmmmm.  Nope, don
Read more

Blonde and Skinny and Fake

I admit that I spend more time than I should thinking about how I look.  I don't know about you, but I was indoctrinated at a very early age.  Like many newborns, I had blonde hair at birth.  That blonde hair usually doesn't last.  It didn't last on me.  I don't know exactly when it happened, but I remember that my mother poured peroxide over my hair when it started getting dark.  Now, my mother was an educated woman; she received her Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Illinois in 1943.  But, even an educated woman apparently wanted her first child to remain a blonde.  For years, she went to the drug store to get some Miss Clairol Blonde formula with which to keep me bright and beautiful (in her eyes, anyway).  I don't know how she found the time, but it must have been quite the priority for her.  This was a woman with a medical practice in our home who was very often called away to deliver babies.  Looking back, I am amazed at all that she did.   For
Read more

Love, Heartbreak, and Life Is Short

Believe it or not, I was a very shy child.  Really.  When it was time to go to high school, I went to a coed Catholic school   I didn't do well.  After I survived one very unhappy year there, I begged my parents to let me attend the all girls Catholic school where a couple of my good girlfriends were.  I felt safe there with none of those annoying boys hanging around.  Yeah, I was spoiled.  I had no idea how expensive that place was.  But, I was happy there. In my senior year, we were offered the opportunity to go on a religious retreat somewhere in New York.  Yay!  I don't know who thought it would be a great idea to have an all girls school and an all boys school attending the same weekend retreat, but it was there I met the boy who was to be my first real love and my first truly devastating heartbreak.   David (not his real name...I've changed the name to protect the innocent) was so handsome.  He had long blond hair (this was the 1970s, so long blond hair on a Catholic
Read more