This Dang Thumb

Hi friends! I hope you all are doing well. I’m hearing of more and more people getting the vaccine and I’m so excited to hear this and to see some signs of us all being able to move forward and get back to doing the things we love and miss doing. I miss restaurants and concerts and a houseful of family and friends the most. We are getting closer, so be patient and keep hope!

We’ve moved past those really cold days and are experiencing some beautiful sunny weather here in KC the last few days. Expected sunny and 70 today, my absolute favorite temperature! We spent Saturday night on the deck watching TV with a fire in the fireplace for the first time in several weeks and it was perfect.

If you’ve not watched the series Ted Lasso on Apple TV, I could not recommend it more. Sweet, endearing, so funny, motivational and just an all around great series! I down loaded the Apple TV app and watched it on my phone in the hospital last week (Yep, more on that in just a second) then rewatched the entire series with Mike over the weekend. The only updated smart TV we have is the new one outside so thank goodness for warmer weather!

Also on Apple TV, the series The Morning Show with Jennifer Anniston (good series, felt like it was based on anchor, Matt Lauer’s fall from grace) and the movie, Palmer with Justin Timberlake. Palmer was such a good movie (watched that in the hospital too!) and I’d not seen Justin Timberlake in a role like that before. Highly recommended!

Thumb Saga

This is from my post a couple of weeks ago. I feel like I’m writing a book about a thumb.

I’m continuing to battle thumb complications. I get tired of talking about it. Insert eye roll. I had an ultrasound last week on it to find out what a new lump is that developed near the surgery site about three weeks ago. They discovered the lump is fluid and that scar tissue is in fact attached to the tendon, which is preventing me from bending the tip of my thumb. Now they want me to come back this week to extract liquid from the lump to have it tested, then schedule ultrasound therapy to try and break up the scar tissue. My surgeon told me at my appointment this morning that it may not bend for months. A tad discouraged to say the least.

Bad Juju?? Bad karma??

I’m not sure what to call what’s happening now other than extremely frustrating and it’s really beginning to wear on me. I had the needle aspiration. It was awful! They discovered I have a staph infection. I was put on oral antibiotics.

One week later (and a series of three ultrasound PT to break up the scar tissue) I woke up to this! The needle aspiration and the PT seemed to piss off my thumb.

I knew after a week of taking antibiotics, my thumb shouldn’t look like this even if it was pissed off. It was a Saturday, but after a phone call and sending this picture to the hand surgeon on call, they had me go to the ER. I didn’t take Mike because of Covid restrictions and assumed I’d be home in a few hours.

My surgeon met me there, opened it, drained it (all of it, awful! I’m just not good at this kinda stuff!) and put me on IV antibiotics and kept me for two nights and brought in the Infectious Disease team. They monitored me closely for the next 48 hours and said it was a good thing I came in.

I was sent home on oral antibiotics with an open wound to clean and pack twice a day. My surgeon gave me his personal cell number and told me to call or text with any questions at all and he would see me the following week. After leaving he reached out more than once to check in.

I really want to blame him or his team for something. I’ve verbally expressed this to him and his team, but I truly believe I’m just having bad luck.

The twice daily cleaning and re-packing is starting to give me major anxiety.

After sharing photos and videos with him after leaving the hospital, he was concerned and had me come into the office Monday, one week after going home from the hospital.

He and his colleague examined me and there is concern about the obvious signs of lingering infection while still being on antibiotics. They explained to me how the permanent stitches used to repair the tendon are braided and they are concerned those stitches may be hanging onto bacteria making it hard for my body to rid of the infection. They tell me this is rare, but that it does happen. A ruptured tendon is also very rare, but it does happen, clearly. Now that the tendon has had time to heal, they think going in and removing the stitches is the next step in ridding me of the infection.

I’m having surgery to do that tomorrow.

Mentally, I’m worn out. The office visits, the PT. The cleaning and packing experience. The decisions. The worry. The poking and prodding. Ugh.

Silver lining……I mean you knew I’d have one, right?

While in there, he should be able to release the scar tissue from my thumb tendon so I can actually move my thumb! That would be awesome! I’m also having lots of finger pain since this December 1st surgery and he thinks there may be extensive scar tissue in there messing with all the finger tendons, which is causing the pain. If so, he can possibly make progress there.

Gold lining….Is that a thing?

Tess is coming from Dallas today! We’ve only seen each other once in the last year.

She’s been worried but I really didn’t want her to feel the need to come here. She knows me for sure and it’s been kinda hard to keep it all together recently. I’m feeling defeated. She eats pretty much the same way I do and she wants to come and prepare some meals to freeze and just make the next few days easier. I said no at first because I know she has been cautious through Covid, limiting what she does, but I also know she really wants to be here, so she is on the plane as I type this and will be here later this afternoon. It will be nice to have my girl here!

As friends take trips and go to restaurants, I continue to decline invitations because it’s just what I feel comfortable with right now. While I don’t feel like I’m living in fear, I am very aware that I’m hesitant to do some of the things others are comfortable with. I’m incredibly lucky to have friends that don’t judge me (as far as I know!) for my decisions, nor I them. We are all doing what we are comfortable with in this truly crazy effed up time in our lives. I hope you are all lucky to have the same understanding people in your life, no matter what you are or are not comfortable with.

I miss my spur of the moment short trips with my girlfriends. After going back on forth on whether to go or not, I recently accepted an invitation for a quick overnight. I hesitated to go now dealing with this infection, but made a plan for keeping it protected and decided to go. I was now really looking forward to a get away where I could enjoy being outside sitting around the fire, sipping wine with my friend and pretending like everything was normal. I was leaving today. Now I’m not.

Not Eating My Feelings

In order to not eat my feelings I’ve kept myself super busy around the house as you know. Painting rooms, organizing closets, organizing the same closets…only MORE organized! lol. Arranging my clothes by color and sleeve length. Pants, then jeans……then doing it all over again but with better hangers. This is not a joke ya’ll. I just DO NOT sit still well, and if I’m not doing something, that old mentality creeps back in and wants to snack to kill time, and that just…..Can. Not. Happen.

The Scale Does Not Determine My Worth. It is simply information.

I’m really proud of myself for keeping an eye on the scale and knowing what I need to do with the information that the scale gives me. And that is a huge accomplishment in itself, recognizing that the scale is just INFORMATION.

In the past the number on the scale creeping up would have provoked all sorts of negative self talk. You’ve failed. You’re failing. You can’t maintain. You’re doing things wrong. You don’t get it Julie.

Now that number on the scale simply tells me I’m eating more food than my body requires and I need to pay attention. That’s it. Pretty simple, right? I’m not a bad person. I’m not a failure. I don’t suck at life. I just need to be mindful and pay attention to what my body needs. The scale gives me the information I need to make adjustments. That’s it.

This is maybe my biggest accomplishment in the self aware department of my health and well being.

Blogging

I’ve really struggled to get back into a regular blogging routine these last three years as I get tired of talking about health issues. When I’m talking about camping, food, family fun, WW or trips or something exciting then it’s easy to share. When I’m sitting at home having this little pitty party I hate that I’m admitting to having, I have a hard time sharing much of anything.

The name of my blog, The Weight of My Weight, holds so much meaning. I’ve maintained my weight somewhere in the 170s for about 8 years now. That’s important for me when I look back at my life and how the scale went up and down so drastically for so many years and how it played with my ability to be happy or unhappy. The title of my blog came easy to me when I first started sharing my journey because my weight was always something that weighed heavy on my mind and my weight determined my mood. I let that number have so much power over me. I let that number give me value. I let my weight determine my worth to myself and what I thought I might be worth to others. I’ve learned so much over the years. Although my weight and stepping on the scale regularly is an important part of my overall health, I no longer allow that number on the scale to give me value as a person to myself or to anyone else. I don’t give that number the power I gave it in my past. That is success!

I’ve struggled through these last few months with the auto immune disease diagnosis (MCTD) and finding out what foods help me feel better and what foods make me feel like utter crud. I cook over 90% of what we eat and I’m very particular about the processed foods I bring into the house. All that means a lot of time spent in the kitchen, which I actually enjoy, so the cooking has not been a challenge, until the thumb. Chopping, cooking, clean up, it all just started taking so much time, it was awkward and uncomfortable and eventually I began to settle for whatever was easy, but still fit into the category of foods that made me feel my best.

Eggs, Chicken Sausages, avocado, raw nuts, all the fruit, pre-cut fresh veggies, rotisserie chicken. Simple. Boring but easy and healthy. As I face this surgery, although this hopefully will be fairly simple to recover from, it involves my hand. That makes meal prep hard, that makes yoga hard. It’s just making taking care of myself a little bit more difficult. Mike is a big help when I tell him what I need from him, but he works a lot of hours and our routine for years has been in the evening when he gets home or he’s done working in his home office for the day, I have dinner ready. Working together at the end of the day to get dinner ready can happen easily on some nights, but not every night. I thought about just coming back on the blog and saying I was taking a break because the food here is boring right now and I’m super cranky, but then I got to thinking.

What if one of my readers is also going through a challenging time trying to take care of themselves?

How do you get through that? How do you successfully get through that? And when I say successfully, I don’t mean perfectly. I mean what are some strategies for doing the best you can when there is a challenge?

I decided a long time ago that I would never give up on myself and I often repeat to myself, “I can do hard things”. And so can you.

So here I am. Here I stay.

My emotions have been all over the place. Frustrated. Pissed off. Confused. Irritable. I feel exhausted. All the feelings. All the thoughts.

But, it will all eventually pass, and I will be so proud of myself for continuing to blog, for taking care of myself and knowing what that looks like, for sharing here, for encouraging you and hopefully motivating you to do the same, no matter the obstacles you may encounter along the way!

Today’s strategy. Drink plenty of water. Think positive. Get outside and soak up the sun. Be grateful Tess is coming in to visit and to cook! Stay calm.

Until next time!

“Love the life you live, live the life you love”