"This is gonna suck"

I am falling apart. I am an ancient 27-year old lady. Most recent on my list of old-lady maladies is Trigger Finger. About 6-odd months ago, I noticed that my middle finger got "stuck" in the mornings...it wouldn't uncurl without substantial effort. I thought, hey, this is hilarious! Until about a week ago when it started to hurt. I went to our student health center, and sure enough, Trigger Finger. My doc wanted me to go see hand guy ASAP.


So I went today. Turns out this guy actually goes to my church. I totally recognized him, but he didn't recognize me. It was too weird to have my hand checked out by this man I "know" without any sort of "oh, hey, I know you!" so I asked, "Do you go to St Matthew?" He looked totally surprised, and I said that I thought I recognized him/his name, and that I went there. There was still no "oh, yeah, I thought I recognized you too!" or anything like that, but he was nice and so I didn't let it bother me too much.

There are 3 ways to deal with Trigger Finger:

1) Just deal with it. Apparently, however, it is one of those things that won't get better with time; it will only get worse.
2) Get a super-fun steroid shot.
3) Have surgery.

Thankfully, my case isn't too bad and so the super-fun steroid shot should do the trick.

He left, and the nurse got all the injecty things ready.

And then she left.

I was by myself for really only 5-10 minutes, but in that time I got a little anxious, and I made up a "This is gonna suck" song.

Unfortunately, much in the same way that Tenacious D couldn't remember the greatest song in the world, I don't remember all the words that I made up. Mostly though, it was along the lines of "This is gonna suck, this is gonna suck, suck so much but then I'll be better....." etc etc.

So when the good doctor came in, we were just chatting about grad school or something and he said ok, poke! And in went the needle, and the lengthy shot continued.

This was the first time I've ever had a steroid shot. It isn't a quick "poke, shot, done," it's longer. And so I stopped talking. And starting humming my "This is gonna suck" song. He was a little surprised, and kind of made a "hmm?" sound, so I told him what I was singing. He and the nurse burst out laughing, and he said that he usually gets a torrent of profanities, so he'll take a "This is gonna suck" song. And then we made fun of the tough college boys who pass out from the shot.
UPDATE: This actually happened 2 days ago, and I started writing and then got distracted. My finger/hand is still a little sore, and he said it should take ~3 days to really kick in, so I'm waiting....

Surgery Post IV: Things I was blatantly LIED TO about

It's been awhile since I've posted anything about my surgery. This was what I really, really wanted to write, but have been putting off. Granted, a month and a half after the fact I'm a little less super-raged about this, but I felt it should still be shared before I forget.

• "You can wear plastic jewelry in your piercings." When I scheduled my surgery, a month or two before it even happened, one of the nurses was going over my instructions for the day-of. "Wear comfortable clothing, no make-up, no jewelry--" "What about piercings?" I asked. "No piercings...but if you want to keep some holes open you can wear plastic jewelry." "What about quartz?" "What's that?" "Glass..." "No, it has to be plastic." "Ok." So you see, I did not just imagine being told that I could wear plastic jewelry in my piercings. So then I proceeded to order some plastic jewelry on interwebs, but then I waited too long and was afraid it wouldn't come in time, so then I bought some more from Hot Topic and the body jewelry cart in the mall. Overall, not a huge financial setback, but one I'd rather not have made in vain. When I went into surgery, the nurse there went over the same questions. "No makeup?" "No." "No jewelry?" "Only plastic." "...That still needs to come out..." And we chatted. She leafed through their rule book, and even called the nurse at the front. Who, apparently, was so irritated that I had been lied to that she wanted to know the girl's name who told me this. I didn't know it. But anyway, they gave me a denture cup to put my ugly, plastic, non-returnable jewelry into. It took me about a week to get everything[1] back in, but thankfully, I was at least able to.

• "The worst part of the nerve block will be that it feel really weird when we make your foot move and you aren't doing it." BULL. SHIT. Maybe if it hadn't been the first time the anesthesiologist had done this particular type of nerve block, that would have been true. But it HURT. It took a REALLY long time (15-20 minutes?) of this douche-nozzle[2] poking and digging around in my thigh until he was about to give up, and miraculously as he was pulling the electrode out he FINALLY hit my nerve. Which leads me to my next, and very related point:

• "We're giving you something so that you won't remember this." GO FUCK YOURSELVES. I feel like that if I remember being said this to, and I remember my jag-off anesthesiologist telling the nurse to give me more of whatever this magic Roofie was supposed to be, they did their job wrong. Especially considering that, oh, I do remember just how bad it was. My friend Emily who is a nurse tells me that they tried to 'Twilight' me. Apparently, it didn't take. Also, not anything I suppose I was lied to about, but the insertion site of this thing was ridiculously painful, which made getting remotely comfortable later on almost impossible. I'm seriously considering not getting another one if I have to get my other foot done.

• "It's just a little mosquito bite, and it doesn't hurt at all." Earlier, I mentioned that I was not told that, oh BTW, you're going to have to give yourself a shot every day for the next 10 days. I understand the importance of these shots. My family has a history of blood clots[3] and I'm on birth control[4] so apparently I'm at high risk. I'm a pretty 'big-girl' about shots. I don't usually mind them too much. But I can't say I was looking forward to this at all. I was comforted, however, by the fact that both my nursing student, her nursing teacher, and my friend Emily had told me that this shot was no big deal. A teeny, tiny little needle. A mosquito bite. Deep breath. Ok. Let's do this. The stick itself wasn't too bad. But the injection was HORRIBLE. It hurt SO BAD. The worst part though? No one believed me! A combination of being tired, hungry, in pain, knowing I'd have to put myself in pain, and not having anyone believe that I was in pain, and I burst into tears. After telling me for the twelfth time, 'that's a little baby shot! It doesn't hurt!' my wonderful nurse, Jayme, finally thought maybe I was telling the truth. She looked at the injection site...and I had a big rash emanating from it. Whoops! But then, the 5 other nurses that Jayme had brought in to figure out why I was in so much pain decided that clearly I was allergic to the alcohol swab. Yeah, no. Definitely, I'm allergic to Lovenox, which apparently almost no one is. Due to the fact that no, I couldn't have just taken an aspirin and a shot of vodka every day instead, and the other formulation is not yet generic, not covered by insurance, and therefore cost about a month's salary, I ended up taking the damn Lovenox, but with an ice pack and Benedryl beforehand.

[1] It's not like I have a hundred. But I do have a few I was worried about closing up...

[2] He actually seemed like a pretty nice guy, before I hated him more than Nickelback. Especially considering that he came to check up on me afterward and went almost PROUDLY into detail about how hard it was to find my nerve and how he had to dig around in there for so long...

[3] Thanks, Grandma! I also appreciate the tiny boobs and lazy eye. (No really, I love her very very much!)

[4] Woooo!

Surgery Post III: Things No One Told Me

Much like "Oh by the way, the reason you have a sore throat is because we shoved a breathing tube down your throat but we didn't want to tell you beforehand (see previous post)," there were definitely a few things that I wasn't expecting, because simply put, no one bothered telling me. Some are more serious than others.

• They put the nerve block in while you're still awake. The nerve block is a wonderful invention...I believe it's the same technology as an epidural, only instead of going in the spine, it went in my thigh to make just about my entire calf and foot totally numb so that when I got out of surgery, I would have next to no pain at all. I assumed this would be done while I was already unconscious. Nope! While awake. I have lots more to say about this, but that will be part of a later post.
• Peeing is REALLY hard. They had me use the bed pan for the first night. Part of it is, I'm sure, psychological...I've been actively, purposefully, NOT peeing in my bed for 23-odd years. But that aside, something about the anesthesia or the morphine simply makes it really, physically, difficult to pee. I have never had to concentrate so hard to pee before. And then, of course, as soon as my body 'remembered' how to go, I had to go every hour or two all night long. But even though I 'had to,' it was hard. 
• My toes look like plastic. So says my husband. My TOES are swollen. I had my plaster/gauze/Ace bandage splint replaced today with a sweet green cast, so I finally got to see my foot. There is so much swelling, but apparently it's perfectly normal. For some reason, I was not expecting this much.
• Oh, and, by the way, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO GIVE YOURSELF A SHOT EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT 2 WEEKS. It's so I don't get a blood clot. That would be bad. I was wondering why I had gotten a packet in the mail, "How to Self-Inject," but since no one had cared to tell me, I didn't think much of it. I have lots more to say about this, too.