Off with her hands...

I could wish for both my hands amputated, but I fear that such would just be replacing one kind of pain for another.

My hands have been hurting more and more and more.  They have become weaker and weaker, making all those improvement projects harder.  The last painting job I actually duct-taped the paint brush to my hand because I could not hold onto it.  The last flooring job, my hands ached for days and days and days. But even before I have been struggling with pain in my hands.

Some days worse than others.  Some wanting to scream at the though of just trying to bend my fingers. I find myself staring at them, wondering why they are not ten times the size.  Mostly, I see no difference.  I just feel it.

To me, it seems as if I used my hands in the five days of the funeral trip more than I have in the previous five months ... maybe even five years.  Well, the latter is an exaggeration, but surely not the former.

There are many things that I have found myself doing without realizing that I had been doing it.  Just as I mentioned that I have become accustomed to do things upon high surfaces, most particularly the top of the built-in china cabinets and my burled maple chest.  Either that or lounging in the GREEN chair and working with my body in the least painful position possible.

But it occurred to me today that when I am lounging and writing, my wrists and forearms are supported and my hands are resting primarily on the computer.  The thank you notes, condolences, and note cards that I sent were excruciating for the labor in writing them.  I realized that is so because writing is far more use of my hands than typing.  Holding a pen, holding still the paper, both actions without unsupported hands.

In any case, I have spent nearly three weeks waiting for my hands to stop hurting.  They have not.

The first four or five days home, all of me hurt and was so tired I mostly just dozed.  My exhaustion is less and my legs and back are much, much better.  But not so my hands.  They hurt.  They hurt so much I spend a lot of time just weeping and wondering when they will stop.

I have been primarily in bed, and even there I struggle to find a way to place my hands in which they will hurt less.  Sometimes, I wrap them up in the heating pad, but I cannot hold them there for long, though the heat helps mute the pain, because it is a labor to hold on to the two edges of the heating pad in order to keep my hands tucked within the coiled pad.  Sometimes, I slide them beneath the heating pad, but it hurts to have them flat, it hurts to have them curled into fists, it hurts to have them with my wrists at all sorts of different angles.  Mostly, I search for a way to have my wrists aligned with my hands on sort of a sloped fashion with my hands ever so slightly cupped upon something.  I find easier on my hands if I have them palms up, but that sort of twisting hurts my upper arms.  Well, mostly my upper right arm, which has never been well from an injury I got while serving as a missionary.

My wrists have long hurt.  I think somewhere amongst the entries of this blog are moanings about my wrists hurting.  That is one of the reasons driving first became hard.  I would stick my arms through the holes in the steering wheel and drive with my arms because holding the wheel hurt my wrists.  I would also stuff pillows between myself and the steering wheel to try and make it so that my wrists were supported.

This could be faulty remembering, but I believe this is why Bettina first started fetching me for a visit or at least driving part way.  The trip between Virginia and Pennsylvania being too long.  In fact, I think, there was a moment when I was visiting her, about a half hour or so from her house and I broke down in tears, certain that I could not stand the pain a second longer and would not make it to the haven of her home.

Compression helped my wrist pain,  so I would sometimes hold one to ease the pain.  At least I did before my grip started growing weaker.  Until typing this, I had not realized that was another change in the past two years.  I simply do not drive.  And much of my lounging time is with my wrists supported.  So, I have stopped paying attention to them except at night, which has always been a battle to find the right position for them.

In any case, it is so, so, so hard to lie in such a way that all bits of me are at least somewhat comfortable.  And these days ... days I despair will never end ... my hands never stop hurting.  Sometimes worse, sometimes less worse.  Always in pain.

I want to shout, to scream until my voice is gone.  Only it will not help.  And it is just pain in my hands.  It could always be worse, right?

Worse, yes.  Wildly painfully worse, yes.  But, now, I would proffer the constant, unceasing strain of bearable pain is actually unbearable.  Or so it feels ... in every sense of the word ... to me.

Of course, should anyone come willingly near me waving a machete or something, be sure to cut above the wrist.  Might as well kill two birds with one stone.


Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.