Pre-Trial Results

I went to the gym to see how long it would take me to do the 3.5 mile juant.
I decided on the elliptical as I have been having some serious ankle/hip pain due to the London-esque weather (read: rainy) here lately.
After getting bored and deciding I had enough, I pulled the towel off the stat screen and was sad to see that I had only gone 1.15 miles in 20 minutes.  Yes, yes, I know that’s actually good, but I thought I had been on there for forty five minutes and had gone at least three miles.
Alas, I hobbled off the machine and limped to the car.

Today is no better as the pain has radiated up into my hip; when I limp due to my ankle injury, my hips go off kilter, causing them and my low back to be unhappy.
I’m totally going to do this thing tomorrow, pain or not.
Why?  Because I  have to.

Dear Brain,

Dear Brain,

For around 29 years now, there have been fingers at the end of the hands.
Please be more mindful of them because you’ve unwittingly misplaced the third one in six months and now my pinky is all purple and swollen.
I know that you know that there are nerves in said fingers and that I am a ten-finger-typer.
Your mindlessness towards my digits has become quite annoying, not to mention painful.
If you keep this up, the liver will be talking with you next as it’s once again processing a pain reliever.

Thank You,

Stephanie

Stupid Voice in my Head, Always being right…

Between machines, Mental Image Stephanie is cheering me on.
Who’s hot?
Who’s fierce?
Who’s kicking butt?

I sit down at a contraption I saw from the bicep curl (you would THINK that after the Arc Trainer, PERHAPS I would have known better…)
“Deltoid/Pec Fly”
And as I’m setting the machine up and finding out where my tolerance is, another voice chimes in.
Stay away from exercises that make you have a flying motion.

Insert flashback music…
I am at the PT’s office, receiving treatment for what we think is a rotator cuff tear in my right arm.  We’ve gone as far as we can and he shows me some things I can do to help build the muscles in the area.  “Now remember Stephanie, stay away from exercises that make you have a flying motion.”

Return to the present.

Mental Image Stephanie suggests that maybe we shouldn’t do this.
Current Stephanie says that the injury was from 2004, it is now 2008 and I’m sure I’m fine.

Mental Image Stephanie was right.
Now that I look back at my activities last night, I was totally not using my right arm.  And I’m right handed.
This explains why I did not sleep well last night and why it’s not pleasant to move my arm more then fifteen degrees.

Stupid voice in my head, always being right….

Evidence of the injury.

Below, you’ll be able to see the injury.  I think it’s a bit gross, so that sounds like fair warning.
If I knew how to work my camera, there’d be better focus…
Okay, so here we have the side with the hardened blood blister. I thought this was the side I broke, but you’ll see that’s not the case.

And here’s the side that was bleeding. There is some swelling still, but I think due to the blister on the other side, I didn’t think much of this part of the injury…

That was, until the swelling went down (a bit) and I have a very sexy crook right above the knuckle. Oh, it’s tender and I have to watch how I tape it and/or how the splint bumps against this side… evidently.

Coincidently, this finger illustrates how I feel about the injury.

Pwned1!!

I had a medication follow-up at the doctors office yesterday.
When in Rome…. I asked the PA to take a look at my (still hurting and swollen and purple) finger.
She obliged.
I am NOT kidding, she gasped and took a stop back.   She pokes and prods and presses.
“Would you be willing to get an x-ray done?”, she asks.
“Well, hypothetically, if it is broken, what can be done?”
“Well, um, not much. A taping… you know, it’s the very tip of your finger so there’s not much…”
“Yeah, well, I’ll pass then.  Why waste the time and resources.  I still have a split from when I crushed my OTHER finger.”
So, I know that they need an x-ray to diagnose a break, but it’s broken.
AND
Steve’s getting The Flu.
Yeah, the one I had a few weeks ago.

What a match made in heaven.   So romantic with the discoloration and the phlegm.

In which I again forget where my fingers are (not as dirty as it sounds)

Walking into the house last night, I’m juggling a bag of take-out, my purse, a shaker of cinnamon, two fortune cookies and my keys.
I quickly pull the door closed behind me as it is 6 degrees (yes, Fahrenheit), the wind chill is -18 (yes, Fahrenheit) and I don’ want ANY of that in my house.
In the hastiness, I forget to remove my finger from the knob and in turn, I successfully catch it between the door and the jamb.
A four-letter expletive escapes my lips and I drop the food on the table.
Steve half-heartedly asks what’s wrong (as I have a penitence for making mountians out of molehills).
Busy tip-toe-prancing around the front hall, kicking off my shoes and trying deep breathing exercises, I manage to yell out (in short spurts)  “I! caught! my! finger! in! the! door!”
Racing back into the kitchen to get cold water on my finger, he says (in his Steve-way, not condescending) “Well, why would you do that?!”
Slamming the cinnamon onto the counter (coat and hat still on) I yell at him, “Why the *#@! do you think I did it?!”
He looks at me like I rolled over Bailey with the car.
Finger under the tap, I start crying.  Not even alligator tears but full-on-fill-up-the-glasses-crying.
Steve walks over, hears my wailing, sees my finger and instantly offers things such as aspirin, ice, ice water…  He then “comforts” me by telling me that I still have 7 uninjured fingers and two uninjured thumbs.
Through the tears, I ask him if he would still love me if I had no fingers.
He asked me to change the topic.
I then made an inappropriate comment and we both laughed, at which point I graciously accepted ice water and three ibuprofen.

(It looks like my finger rolled up and over my nail, causing bruising on both sides as well as bleeding on both sides and I think my nail is busied.)

A Fantastic Afternoon at Emergency Care

It was a normal afternoon.
I was doing some paperwork, some filing.
Due to it being the end of the year, the cabinet drawers are quite heavy.  The cabinet company was very smart in putting self-closing drawers so the cabinet doesn’t tip when drawers are left open.
This is a fantastic idea, except for when reaching to keep the drawer open, a fingertip finds its way between the pointy corner and the interior of the cabinet.
It hurt so bad that I didn’t even yell.  I swore, but I didn’t yell.
I shook my fingers, i jumped up and down, I doubled over in agony.
After a half hour of Tylynol and ice water, and the swelling hadn’t gone down (and actully had increased), I had an appointment at the emegency care facility.
My finger being twice it’s normal size, swelling all the way down to my knuckle and a reduced sensation, I was hooked up with x-rays.
While I didn’t break it (it’s a very deep bruise), I now sport an EXTRA sexy finger split, which comined with the heat radiating from the injury makes my finger sweat.
I am not looking forward to when the swelling goes down.
It just wouldn’t be the holidays if I wasn’t injured.