The Thumb of DOOM

So its kind of amazing to me just how disabled dissing your THUMB can make you. You really wouldn't think so but holy crap.

1. I can't get it wet for any longer than say a quickie shower (please hold it out of the water most of the time) once a day. Therefore doing the dishes, taking a long hot bath, cleaning the bathrooms, etc are all a no go. I suppose I could surgical tape a glove to my hand but really? The adhesive I HAVE TO HAVE to keep the stitches under wraps is already making my skin crazy. Do I really wanna spread the joy??

2. I can't bend it or grasp anything with my left hand with out REMARKABLE amounts of pain. You ever tried to live your life (esp that of a mother of the worlds largest 19 month old) with out being able to pick up much of anything with your left hand. True, it could be worse. It could be my right hand. But see I usually carry the kid with the left arm so I have my dominate hand free to do stuff. Also attempting to use the left arm but NOT the hand results in your shoulder, elbow and wrists being TICKED at you for weeks afterwards.

Also since I popped a stitch in the first 24 hours I had to be EXTRA careful so I didn't pop the others and split my wound open.

So basically no deep cleaning, all lifting must be done with the other arm (which is just THRILLED at me for the extra work) and try to keep it dry, m'kay?

Needless to say by the time I got those friggin stitches out I was ready to kill something and I think there were grimlins living in the filth in my kitchen. Also it took me a week to fix my sleep schedule between the all night trip to the ER and the nice pain pills that really screwed with my head.

So its taken me for frigging ever to unearth my kitchen, decontaminate my fridge and basically start to reverse the downward trend in my houses sanitation level.

Thankfully now my thumb is mostly healed up. The stitches are out. I still put a bandaid and polysporin on it every night when I go to bed just to help it finish healing just b/c the suture where I lost one of the stitches didn't heal nearly as well as the one where the stitches stayed in tact (can't imagine why) and so I'm trying to help it finish healing with the bandaids. The owie still hurts if you apply any pressure to the area but for the most part I can move it and use it with out too much pain. I'm hopeful that someday I'll have a normal thumb again.

So my house cleaning efforts kinda went BOOM for a couple weeks because of the thumb issue but the good news is that we're largely reversing this trend and even making some progress. I have high hopes that maybe by the end of the month we might just have conquered the paper work mountain and slain the dragon that is my living room (baby toys! EVERYWHERE!).

But otherwise things seem to be showing some improvement. We're just sort of holding our breath and waiting to see if they continue on this trend or not.

Also if you want to entertain a toddler for an hour - tie a balloon to his shoe and make the string just long enough so the bottom of the balloon is level with his forehead. He'll have a blast. :)