Skip to main content

Pain Management

This is my working right hand, on which the first three fingers function at about 90%. Now that I've developed on both hands trigger finger, a condition in which tendons lock up, my ring finger becomes very painful whenever I move it, especially when I bend it, and sometimes gets stuck. I'm wearing an adjustable splint on it now to keep it straight. The pinky finger isn't me being snooty; it just doesn't bend much anymore.

This is my dominant but non-working left hand, which has trigger finger in the middle. This finger is the worst of the two as far as pain goes. The last time it got stuck in the curled-over position I had trouble bending it straight again (so it's splinted, too.) It's also turning inward/sideways like my ring finger. I have maybe 20% use of this hand on a very good day, but almost no fine motor skills.

These are the splints I'm wearing, which I bought from Amazon here. They're a bit expensive, but well-made and comfortable, and they do relieve most of the pain. I can do almost anything but type or wash dishes when I'm wearing them. I can also put them on myself, even with my bad hand.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.