Hi everyone,
It’s been a couple of weeks and things have moved on a little bit with my arm, I figured I should really post something at some point :-D.
The big update since last time is that the cast came off Friday last week (9 days ago). Apart from something else that I’ll come back to, it was pretty good under there. When the cast went on 4 weeks before, I had a heavy case of bruising and the wrist still felt extremely delicate just 9 days after the surgery. Plus it hadn’t been washed properly after the surgery so there was a bit of blood there. The personal assessment back then was a realisation that I had a pretty long way to go and it was one reason for not really pushing too hard to come out of the wrist cast.
Fast forward a few weeks and the bruising is all gone and it cleaned up pretty good. The shoulder has one quite extensive scar, the wrist has a couple of pretty respectable scars from the two operations I had but apart from the redness of skin that needs to heal up over time, they’re in really good shape.
Although I am dealing with the aftermath of “I’ll come back to”. One thing I have pretty much nailed in now is an allergy to soya. If you’ve checked ingredients, soya is in a surprising amount of stuff. Like the cookies I was consuming before going back to Manchester and the Twix I consumed before taking the train up. So while I’ll skip over two of the symptoms (let’s just say thoughts of needing laxatives after the hospital diet went away, that part of me got a reset), the soya does attack my skin from the inside. When they took the cast off, it was like the Warhammer 40k meme …
Yeah, we settled for a heavy vacuum cleaner instead. The damage was a huge amount of dried dead skin under the cast but under that, my outsides were in pretty good shape. (Although my elbow ain’t happy at the moment but that’s very treatable).
What I didn’t anticipate was how hard it would be physically after the cast came off. Like having all that extra scope of possible movement brought with it a lot of pain as well. I did get myself to our local mall after it came off but very quickly abandoned after not finding what I wanted in one shop. (I’m after a replacement alarm clock and a blankie) The homing signal was firing off very loudly and I needed to get myself home in time to curl up in a pain filled ball. I was there for a lot of that weekend. I didn’t even stick around long enough to have a chilled out lunch.
The realities now is that while the hand is out of the cast, I have a lot of restrictions still :
Not much up and down of the hand from the wrist joint.
Very little twisting of the wrist.
I can actually move left hand left and right almost as much as the right hand.
Restrictions and swelling that affect how much I can open and close fingers and thumb.
Restriction on the elbow, I can almost fully straighten the arm again now.
And the shoulder still has heavy restrictions on movement and pain in the muscle groups around it.
Yep, that’s been me a lot for the last little while as I settle in to this being a long term very serious injury that’s going to need a lot of healing time. I’m hoping that things will settle enough that I won’t require pain relief by Christmas but the full healing is likely to be 12 to 18 months. I’m also recognising the inner trauma of this event.
However …. it’s not all doom and gloom. I have been seeing very real progress with the injury.
I’ve been able to return to occasional bouts of two handed typing. That needs a bit of twist from the wrist to get the fingers and hand lined up but there’s a bit more there than last week. That does mean that me being me, I’ve been doing too much two handed typing (this is one handed) and therefore putting too much strain in there too soon.
Truck Game on the controller feels easier, haven’t tried space yet. Tried some games that rely fairly heavily on mouse to pan the camera, couldn’t play those much.
The reading binge continues … the latest have been a Martha Wells Murderbot book (much recommend), more adventures of Ishmael in Half Share and more with that. It’s good to escape into a book.
I also went back to Exogate Initiative, it’s a pretty good spin on the Dungeon Keeper / Evil Genius type of game and in this one, you’re running a Stargate programme very much inspired by the show.
And then there’s still a huge amount of love from the online communities. I’m more well known than I’d ever think I could be. Hopefully that’s the result of kind words, a lot of gentle fun and just plain supporting people. I wouldn’t call that an investment, it’s just a good way to be. But what it’s led to is a lot of kind words, good vibes and people checking in genuinely concerned about whether I’m going to be ok.
In a trauma like this one, it’s really important to keep the mind right. Not “it’ll take a year to get right”, more “in a year I’ll be all good again”. At some point, we have to take control of that trauma, own it and move on past it. It’ll always be part of us but it’s up to us to choose whether we live in that moment of trauma, or if we move beyond it and make the best life for ourselves afterwards.
So as part of that, I’ve made that step this week to get back into the office a few times. Good to be back in there, see the people again and there’s some stuff you can only do face to face. Like seeing how people are feeling (I’m probably giving off a heap of stress vibes at the moment), seeing that people are ok. And seeing what they don’t want to talk about over the computer comms.
Gosh, this has turned into longer than I thought it would be. I’ll be hanging in there for now, seeing what I can do and keeping my mind right with online community stuff, gaming where I can, videos and reading.
Future plans include having a ticket for MCM Comic Con at the end of the month. That’ll be a big test of what I can do. With the cast off, I can wear long sleeved things now like coats, although it’s awkward getting them off again sometimes. I’m getting more movement back but it’ll be awkward for a while. Hopefully that pain will be manageable. I don’t feel impact pain properly but when it’s long term stuff, that’s a big ouch.
And I’d like to get myself on a cruise again sometime. I did have the month off signed off sick but I wouldn’t call that particularly restful. I had a week off planned for after the event where the accident happened, that turned into week 1 of 2 in hospital. So I’ve gone from exhaustion into the long convalescence after the accident. I’ll take time off work properly over Xmas but I’ll need to fully disconnect from this phase of life I’m currently in so I can move on to the next. And I think that’ll be a cruise sometime in Jan. Maybe.
We’ll see there. Time to hit post though. Have a wonderful rest of evening everyone and have a great start to your week ahead.
And look after yourselves and your neighbours too, a bit of kindness goes a long way and while the recipient may not know how to show their appreciation (I struggle there but am practicing being better at it), random acts of kindness keep people going.