30-pound baby

Sandra had her last surgery yesterday: the doctor reset a broken bone in her right wrist, along with some misaligned cartilage. She postponed this surgery until she could use her left hand more normally. Imagine not being able to hold anything in either hand! 

Surgery was about two hours...and was successful, but what they didn't tell her was she'd have to deal with a totally numb and unusable arm for at least 16 hours, until the nerve block drugs wore off. She couldn't feel ANYTHING from the shoulder down, nothing on that arm worked. Ther arm was protected  by a sling, but the numbness meant she couldn't use the arm for standing, sitting, eating, anything. 

She said, its like holding a 30-pound baby, that you can't feel or move. The numbness was super freaky because there was no feeling in it, touching her own fingers felt like touching someone else's hand, or an alien hand (verbatim). That was the worst part about the surgery (in my opinion, not hers, see below), not being able to move like she had been, doing more and more "normal" things, and it was terribly frustrating for her. 
 
PS: Sandra says the not moving wasn't the worst, the worst was trying to alleviate the pain once the nerve block wore off at 3.30am this morning; it took almost 12 hours and a lot of pain drugs to make the pain subside.  

Stand up, stand up for your 'writes' *

Tuesday, Sandra had a doctors appt. for renewal of pain medication. We used the wheelchair - for expediency only: she could have walked in using the walker, but it might have taken us about 20 minutes to make it from the car, (oh so slowly) and to the actual office. At checkout, she had to sign things, and I suggested she stand up to make it easier. You see the results! 

*...stand up for your rights, lyric from Get Up, Stand Up, by Bob Marley, one of Sandra's favorite artists. 

Knit or die!

Last week, Sandra had her occupational therapist do extra work on limbering up her left hand. It has been very stiff since she stopped wearing the cast on it, and everyone who looked at it said there was a lot of scar tissue in the wrist which was stopping it from flexing easily. So the OT worked on it Thursday morning, and Thursday night this is what I saw in the front room:

Yeah, Sandra was knitting! She said it didn't work out well, and was using it for 'hand therapy', but afterwards, her hands were both so tired/sore that she said it would be "a while" before she tried again.