« Spy vs. Spy | Main | Leaping Into 2005: The Stan Has Issues™ Podcast »

M.I.A.

So here’s the thing: first I was M.I.A. because I was busy with work; now I’m M.I.A. because I’m incapacitated.

A little over a year ago, I made the mistake of lifting a dense (i.e., small ‘n’ heavy) 50-pound box with one hand. Feeling immediate pain, I thought, “Wow, that’s too heavy.” Too lazy to lift my other hand to assist, I carried the box across the room and felt flares of pain for a few days. In less than a week, I realized I needed medical attention. Unfortunately, I had just quit my job in an angry, obscenity-laced huff, which meant I had no insurance (or money to pay for insurance if I did), and it took six months before I found another one, and another few months before I started working consistently. I used my own medical expertise to self-diagnose Carpal Tunnel Syndrome — because the pain was exacerbated in the extreme by typing — and wrapped an Ace bandage around my wrist for about a month, by which time the pain had alleviated enough for me to blog on an almost-daily basis and continue my other writing bullshit unabated…

Until September, when my job required me to write so rapidly and regularly that, by the end November, I was in constant pain. By that time, I’d gotten an overpriced (but not as much as uninsured treatment) health plan, so I saw my doctor, who tapped my wrist a couple of times and parroted my own self-diagnosis. Muttering something about wasting a copay on that bullshit, I thanked him for the naproxen prescription and spent the next month down anti-inflammatory pills and icing my wrist on a regular basis. It was all great…

…until we hit driveway-shoveling season, at which point it all went to hell. The snowiest December on record undid all the good that had been done prior to this. The Internet is a septic tank of awful, contradictory information on the condition, so I had no clue which demented leg exercises or stretches would actually benefit me. None seemed to work, but when I tried to talk to my doctor again about ways to manage the pain so it’d go away and stay away, a nurse called me back to announce that he’d graciously renewed the naproxen prescription.

A week ago, after another marathon of reading that ended in constant throbbing, I finally decided I needed to see a specialist. I went to an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in wrist injuries. After a few X-rays and some bizarre hand exercises, he announced that I had two conditions working together to ruin my life: torn wrist cartilage from the aforementioned box trauma, and a li’l dab of tennis elbow from a previous trauma that mostly involved me divebombing a guy and wrapping my arms around his neck (not passionately) as we both fell to the ground. I landed right on my elbow and proceeded to not do a thing about it, because who cares? Apparently my wrist injury aggravated that trauma.

I got a delightful cortisone shot, a giant forearm splint, and a protective elbow pad. I’m still in fairly intense pain, and it took me basically the entire week to write this one entry. I hope it won’t shock or dismay anyone to know that I won’t be blogging for awhile, probably not until after Cannes.

It sucks, too, because I have some good stories. Don’t worry, I’m writing them all down. I’ll get to them eventually, and by the time I do, I’ll have forgotten all the details, so the posts will be of a manageable, readable size for the first time in Stan Has Issues™ history.

Tags: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, cartilage, pain, wrist

Posted by Stan on February 19, 2009 4:07 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Random Musings, Stories of Pain and Humiliation | Digg It