moominmuppet

I know plenty of you have various chronic health problems that affect mobility and function. Although this flare is slowly tapering off, and most of the problems are relatively minor now, my hands haven't stopped hurting for the past month and half. Sometimes it's relatively minor, sometimes it's so bad I can't do anything with them without substantial pain and weakness (including petting my animals, brushing my teeth, wanking, sex with my partners, and other basic necessities). More than anything, this is the aspect of the flare that's making me feel hopeless and helpless (and waking me up in the middle of the night constantly -- I can't find a way to sleep where they don't scream at me at some point).

I'm looking for any kind of practical suggestions -- what's worked for you to work around hurting hands? How do you get things done, what helps to make it easier? I've been thinking more and more about some practical life-adjustments, what kinds of minor tools and such might help (like an electric carving knife for when I can't use a regular knife, which I was desperately wanting yesterday -- instead, I found I could tear meat with two forks and get by). I'm already getting better at modifying my hand position when I'm trying to open bottles and such, and getting better at not twisting my hands into the most painful positions when I try to get things done, but I could really use some suggestions.

Dr appt was a very mixed bag, btw. Here's the update I wrote the other day:

GP doesn't understand why the rheumatologist thought she should do the paperwork instead of him. Back and forth between the offices all afternoon, not sure if I got anywhere at all, except that the paperwork is now with the rheumatologist, and his office staff says he's going to "look at it". I'm incredibly frustrated and depressed.

On the positive side, GP is awesome, even if her nurse is remarkably bitchy. She's referred me to pain management, set me up for labs to check for any actual arthritic processes, and we did some adjusting of my meds.

If my previously awesome and now unexplainably flakey rheumatologist doesn't pull his head out of his ass, though, I'm going to have to switch doctors, which means waiting more months for a new patient appointment.


So anyway, that's what's been going on. I'm really struggling with depression at the moment, despite having had a really good holiday with forestfire, and having gotten totally hooked on True Blood in the process (can't wait to get home at watch the last three eps we haven't seen yet -- I blame LJ for this new addiction, btw). I'm going to talk to Pain Management on Monday morning (7:30am), then I'm getting some labwork and x-rays to check to make sure there isn't also an inflammatory process happening, given how different this flare has been. My family is being awesomely, incredibly supportive (I've been missing a lot of pay recently, and Dad just spontaneously forgave a big chunk of debt I owe him, which was amazingly generous, and well beyond the call of duty, especially since he'd already told me not to worry about payments 'til I was doing better, and James and Mom have also been checking in on me regularly). Life could be a hell of a lot worse. Sadly, with my mental state at the moment, that's just feeding the "well, if I can't cope with a little hand pain when I've got all these advantages, I must _really_ suck" logic. *sigh* So, I'm trying to work on that by getting practical. Hence this post.

In other news, I'm really enjoying The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture. Although he occasionally take a theory as more agreed-upon than I believe it to be (the cervical "upsuck" from orgasm being a good example --
The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution goes into the debate in more detail), overall I'm pretty pleased with the book so far. I like that he's not a big fan of the sociobiological approach, and that generally he's good at pointing out various conflicting theories, and the lack of certainty involved in determining which is actually correct. What the hell is up with the lack of footnotes recently, though?! Argh!