I'm trying to teach myself to type again. I have to really think about using my crooked finger when I've developed a pretty solid 9-finger typing routine in the past six or so months since the accident. It is kind of amazing to me that it's been that long.
In mid-March, I lost the tip of my right index finger in an accident involving my parent's dog and one of those extend-o dog leads. He was 60 pounds of determination running past me and I, like an idiot, grabbed the lead. He kept going and I fell over. When I got up I realized what a mess this was as my finger was spurting blood. Yah. Nothing good comes of spurting. Did I mention that at this point I was also 36 weeks pregnant? Yah, idiot.
At that point I'd gone about 33 and a half years with out any kind of scary medical issue. Now, I've crammed all sorts of scary medical stuff into the last six months. It takes a long time for your body to even just heal over that kind of wound. Watching the progression from raw open wound to scab to new skin was a strange kind of science project. The twice daily cleansing and re-bandagings allowed myself and my dad (wound care assistant par excellence) to track the progress and see the inner workings of new skin generation.
And even now it still hurts. At six plus months, the outside of my finger is healed but I still get a fair amount of pain when try to I stretch it out and when it's cold it aches and the tip goes colder faster than the rest of my fingers.
But what's really getting to me lately is the anxiety. The worry that my hands will fail me at some inopportune moment - like when I'm holding the baby or when the stroller tugs against my hands trying to get away from me. I'm not a particularly handy kind of person but the things I can do with my hands are pretty important to me. Having to re-learn how to do things like touch-type and cook (creaming butter & sugar together is difficult when you can't hold your fork in the traditional manner) and use chopsticks (this one may never actually work again... at least not if I want to eat with any kind of speed) is frustrating and keeps pushing me against the loss. The sadness that my hand won't ever be the same and that no matter how much magical thinking I do about that day (if I'd left my house even 2 minutes later) I can't change the situation I'm in.
And my brain has always been bad at not worrying against things it cannot change. Traveling in little anxious circles. It's exhausting. I feel the anxiety as heaviness, like bile in my arms. They vibrate too fast to see and allow my body to keep pushing the poison around until it sloshes heavily in my stomach. I need to work on that... because it's getting exhausting.
