tomorrow is 4 weeks out

Ug. Wrist.

So I got tired of the usual things I was running into and broadened my search on healing after carpal release.
Recovery Milestones for Carpal Tunnel Release Surgery
How to Exercise after Carpal Tunnel Surgery

Like a sports injury kind of approach, right?

It dawned on me I had been turned absolutely loose without anything beyond follow up to remove stitches and a generalized run-through of nerve glides I'd already learned. I wasn't given a time table, what to do over time, wasn't even told how long to ice and elevate. Because of this, I wasn't aware that I could do further injury, and my wrist swelled back up so hard that I was waking up with my hand numb and getting shooting pains up my fingers through the day.

I literally need to be told DO NOT DO THIS LIST FOR THIS LONG. After going over those articles it hit me I had started getting back to 'normal' way too quickly, and even though I did follow the generalized advice, I was already one to three weeks ahead of the healing process on a few things.

Skip healing and go directly to making it worse. *ouch*

So I brought it up with the physical therapist who's been working with me on my knee recovery, and she said it looked good but commanded me to get back on making the time to get my wrist elevated while icing and call my surgeon for therapy on wrist. And then she extended the therapy on my knee for three more visits. So as much as I hate dragging out and having to do this, looks like I'll be in occupational therapy possibly up through Halloween, and in the meantime the rest of my body is going Hey, what about us? Because I was doing nerve impingement last spring and we stopped in the middle of that, and the ongoing maintenance on everything else pretty much just stopped completely.

Wanna say to all the younger people out there who think you're tired and achy and whatever problems with little kids- wait till you're doing all that with the added benefit of being twice as old. It's fun.

Also, carpal tunnel problems are apparently genetic.
Carpal Tunnel? Blame Genes Not Overuse
Study Shows Stronger Link to Genetics Than Excessive Typing or Hand Use

Whee.

In other fun news, I'm about to block a number from contacting me. I have never been chased so hard in my life.

24 days out

click for source

Headaches *galore*.

Kaspersky is gone. Yay! Trend Micro took it's place. Happy joy! It has a password manager. Sweet! I can't log into anything now because all the sites are refusing to acknowledge it's authority. *sobbing*

Meanwhile, Best Buy tried to double bill me by including Trend into their Geek Squad black tie service plan renewal after I'd already purchased and downloaded Trend booooo, so now that is all fqd up and I'm srsly considering just letting that one fall off renewing. I'm sure they'll email me a billion times.

Want to be an Enderman? Click to find out how.

Remember all that old talk about lists and whatever? The top of every single list nowadays is "facepalm". I'm trying to figure out if I've triumphed into a new level of 'this is life now' or if I'm just still untangling my brain from all that anesthesia and lidocaine and I'll be honest, sparsing vicoprofen through all this gabapentin feels more like I've morphed into an Enderman, so I really don't know how I'm handling #allthethings but apparently I'm handling more better than I have in many moons of years, so what the heck, I'll take facepalm if it means full throttle thrive. I just hope I don't seriously screw something up and do the regret thing.

click for source

I can't get this song out of my head.

getting so much experience right now

click for a Shannara write up

Random thought- I see "antimicrobial" as a sell point on things like plastic covered dish drainers, but I never see that word used on toys designed for water (pool, bathtub) play, especially when water can sit inside a toy and mold. Just a thought. Really grosses me out to see kids pretend toys are things to get a drink out of.

My. Hand. HURTS. That is all.

That is not all. I keep remembering all these scenes in TV shows where a character slices the palm of their hand for some reason, to prove they they are human, to make a pact, whatever. Now that I know what a cut that deep feels like and how long it takes to heal and how easily it gets infected, I'm imagining characters down the road with withered hands from nerve damage, missing hands because gangrene, and fumbly klutzy hands for weeks while they heal kind of thing. You don't just slice a hand and then go wield a sword. Or put a saddle on a horse. I can still barely lift my coffee cup.

Doi, here's a whole discussion about it.
Movie and TV characters always slice their palm open when they have to give blood

And another.
The Dramatic Palm-Slice: A Fantasy Trope I've Never Understood

Anyway, I can tell you everything that can go excruciatingly wrong with that palm slice now.

And I'll tell you exactly what I was thinking having a carpal release and knee arthroscopy on the same day, get it all done on only one plop of anesthesia, right. WRONG. Quick surgeries even back to back require extended medications in two different areas and I have had a horrible time coming off all that. It took a few days just for the anesthesia and local numbing agents to wear off, and I got so mean. I was eating people over nothing. The pain med barely covered both areas once that set up regular residence in my body, and then I got so sick and nauseated I had to get off it for a couple days, and then the pain was so brutal I had to get back on it, and I've been clocking out smaller doses so I can balance between the pain med and the actual pain without feeling sick.

I am 22 days out from surgery. I am still in this much pain.

They were not kidding when they said it would take awhile on both wrist and knee. I know I've had some tough issues in my life, but all this getting complicated, even with really fast and smooth healing, has been almost nightmarish to get through. I have a really high pain tolerance, and yowza.

I think the biggest challenge is needing to move around. The rest of my body is so tired of sitting with my leg elevated, my hand is overworked because I'm so bored, my neck is getting spiky pain and yelling at me to get up and go do stuff, and every time I do stuff I swell my knee up again, and this is just a no win situation. There is no comfort, no real rest without scrambling my brain up on meds that screw my baditude, and I cannot wait for this part to be over. Everything I'm reading says 4 to 6 weeks on both knee and wrist for some kind of 'normal' to come back.

I could go into more detail but the enraged dragon in me wants to set my laptop on fire right now, so I'd better just go.

Where's my distraction?!!!!!