Sticking Out Like a Sore Thumb

If it is appropriate to call any surgical experience pleasant, I guess that is what you could call yesterday's surgery. The staff at the Surgi-Center were very nice and took great care of me. I went into pre-op at 7am and by 7:25 I was on my way to surgery #3. I had received some sedative just before they started wheeling me down the hallway. I was starting to wonder if it really was the sedative. I felt very alert and not at all like I was drugged. In the surgery, I wondered if I would have to slide myself onto the table. I was about to ask the technician walking toward the foot of the gurney...then I woke up in recovery. Everything went smoothly and I was home before 9am. Twelve hours after surgery, I still could not feel my thumb. I managed to sleep well, with a pillow wrapped around my arm to keep my hand elevated. 

Things went well at work today. Typing was limited, not from pain, but from the need to keep my hand elevated to avoid pain. This worked until early afternoon when the last trace of any pain reliever left the tip of my thumb. It was like someone unleashed the little monster that kept stabbing my thumb with pins. Most distressing was the realization that, even though I'm right-handed, I use my cell phone left-handed. I seem to dial everything backwards if I use my right hand. Now I feel incapacitated. Tomorrow morning's challenge will be washing my hair without getting my thumb wet or bumped. I'm more concerned about bumping.



No word yet on my ultra-sound results. I know the doctor has them; he just hasn't had time to read through them yet. So, tomorrow we find out about the alien in my belly. Oh, and I forgot about my thumb follow-up next Tuesday, so I'm up to an even dozen medical visits this month.

On a side note - Tuesday, my co-worker in the next cubicle called out to me, "Kathy, did you leave your beer bottle outside my window?" I was very puzzled by her question so I came around the corner to see what she meant. Looking out her window, I saw an empty bottle on the ground. I started laughing, "Oh, that's what you said. I heard, 'Did you lean your bare bottom outside my window?'"