It has been three months, now, since T L Ogre whacked my hand with the big fire log. (It was 3 months on Feb 20th) I seem to have hit a plateau in my hand's healing. My hand made some very small improvements, initially, but over the past month, there has been little to no improvement at all. I still have a lot of pain in it, still a lot of numbness and tingling, and there is still some swelling. Most of the pain and swelling is concentrated right where my middle and ring fingers attach to my palm. I have no doubt that it was broken there, and isn't healing properly.
I am so frustrated with how many daily tasks I am having problems doing, many I can't do at all, from that big ole Ogre whacking my hand. Even just simply drying my hands off with a towel hurts, hurts a lot. I have to just carefully blot dry that hand. Opening jars is almost impossible. Just a couple of minutes of typing sends that hand to throbbing to the point of near tears. Countless times throughout the day, when I put any pressure on my fingers on that hand, or even the palm, my hand spasms and my fingers draw up. This stinks! Will it ever heal?
I am having to learn to use my wrist and my elbow a lot, in place of my hand. That does not work nearly as well as a hand, but I have to do something to keep going as much as I can. Knitting and crocheting are slow, difficult and very painful, some days my hand draws up so bad it just isn't possible at all. Even simple tasks such as turning a door knob or opening a car door are difficult to nearly impossible. Performing any kind of activity that requires any pressure on that hand just doesn't work. Holding my little flashlight at night with that hand is extra difficult. After a few seconds of grasping a flashlight, my hand either draws up or releases what I am holding. Part of my daily routines requires me to hold a flashlight with one hand, while performing a chore/task with the other hand. This is now not an option. My daily chores and tasks have become so much more challenging and difficult.
It feels like there is a rock in the middle of my palm, where my fingers attach on the palm side. I have no idea what that could be but, as I said, that is where the majority of the pain is centered, along with the swelling. Heat is very soothing to my hand, especially when applied to the part that feels like a rock. But anything cold, even just the air being cold, hurts like heck! I need to find somewhere and have it checked, now. The puppies are all rehomed so I don't have to worry about leaving them, and at the moment, he is in an "up" or more level mood for the most part, so it is now time to find a way to get somewhere, and where to go, to get my hand checked out while I am in the moment.
I had a little accident a few nights ago that was very telling with this hand. It told me that my hand is still worse than I realized. I had made a pot of coffee on top of the kerosene heater in the tent. The coffee was at a medium rolling boil and had been for awhile. Keep in mind that the connector to attach the lid to the pot is broken, so the lid just loosely sets on the pot. Also remember that my right hand had been badly injured years ago and sometimes isn't real sturdy.
I picked up the pot of boiling coffee with my right hand and started to pour it into my coffee cup, held with my left hand. My right hand unexpectedly wobbled hard, the lid went flying and coffee started to splash. In my efforts to regain control of the boiling hot coffee, I managed to pour the boiling hot coffee in the pot all over the back of my left hand that was holding the coffee cup (the hand the Ogre whacked). The most shocking and scary part of all of that was.... it didn't hurt!
There I stand, totally confused because the coffee was at a rolling boil when I started to pour it into the cup, I instead poured it all over my hand (about 2 coffee cups worth or more), my hand was beat red, but I only felt a slight warmth and no pain! I kept thinking, that should have hurt. Wasn't that coffee hot? I grabbed a bottle of cool water next to me and poured over my hand because I knew it should have hurt. It was red, obviously scalded, but didn't feel hot nor burned, so common sense told me that it needed to be cooled off. I stood there puzzled, then decided to take a sip of the coffee that had made it into the cup to see if it was, indeed, hot. At this point, the coffee in the cup had had a minute or two to cool. Yep, it was hot! I burnt the end of my tongue and a corner of my lip on that sip. My tongue still hurt and had a small blister on it even the next day. So.... my hand should have felt that boiling coffee that heavily poured over the entire back of my hand. This is not good.
My hand didn't blister, but it was very red all the next day. Hopefully pouring cool water over it immediately heedlp keep that from happening, but the next day, and still today, if I run my other hand over the back of the injured hand, I can slightly feel on the surface some pain from the boiling coffee. Yep, time to start looking for a medical place that will check my hand out without me having any insurance or money, and tell me what is wrong with it. I need to know before I start putting the extra stress of packing and moving onto it and see if there is anything I can be doing that will make it heal further. Please help me pray that my hand is not permanently damaged, that it will have a full recovery, and some positive, healing thoughts would be great, also. Thank you!
Thank you, also, for stopping in and have a beautiful day!
Signed - Betty Sue
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