Tag Archives: pain

Once Burnt, Twice Shy

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“Pain changes everything.”

That’s what my wonderful and amazing physical therapist said to me. She was having me walk side by side with her while she held her hand up, palm towards me, and had me lean my left shoulder against it as we walked. It was to retrain my brain, though she didn’t specify that, I knew that was the purpose of the exercise.

I tend to favor my left leg, therefore, I walk crooked. My gait is off, with the resultant muscle cramps on that side. Muscles screaming at me, hey, this is not our regular job!

But that’s what naturally happens with an injury, you subconsciously splint whichever part of the body has suffered, to protect it. It is primal, it is reflex, it is the survival instinct.

After the horrific pain I experienced for weeks, due to sciatica and a slipped lumbar disc, my brain wants to avoid a repeat. I don’t even have to think it. It’s like breathing. I limp when I don’t have to.

Now, I have to interrupt the distress signal that’s automatically being sent out. I have to teach my brain that it’s OK now. It’s OK to put my full weight on my leg. It’s OK to walk normally. It’s OK to climb one step with it, and step back down with it. I won’t crumble.

Now at the end of week 6 since this saga began, I am doing much better with medication and even better with PT, after only two sessions so far. I thought for sure there would be hell to pay the morning after my first session, but amazingly there was almost no pain in the morning, which is when I suffer the worst pain of the day, usually.

My therapist is showing me what my leg can still do, putting it through a workout, which even includes pedaling a stationary bike. At first, I was skeptical, but I got on the bike, put my feet on the pedals and got going, and it was like: Look, Ma, no pain!

I have to admit that my favorite moments of that hour and a half are the heat treatment in the beginning, followed by massage to my sore left side and leg, and the ice treatment, along with lower back muscle stimulation, at the end.

In between those moments, I could very well be at a gym with my own personal trainer coaching me through one exercise followed by another and then another. Everyone is masked, given the age we live in now, and everyone is pleasant and accommodating.

I actually look forward to going to my twice-a-week sessions, and I’m thankful to having my leg back in action and my pain mostly gone. And I do my exercises faithfully every day to strengthen my leg and my core. And hopefully, I will need no further intervention.

As I hope all is well with you.

My new exercise ball with which I do stretches while sitting in a chair. My grandkids will have fun with it as well.

Pain

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I realized with a shock that I haven’t been using my Refresh eye drops for over three weeks now. Normally, my eyes are so dry upon waking that they burn like fire and it hurts to open them, and it hurts to blink.

Every morning, I would reach out my arm so my hand could dive into the drawer of my bedside table where it would search for a single-dose plastic vial. I would instill the drops in both eyes for sweet relief. I could blink, I could open them, I could read, my morning ritual.

But lately, I’ve had no need to go hunting for the eye drops. My eyes were closed so little. They didn’t have the chance to develop dryness. In a way that was good. But in another, that was bad.

Pain was the culprit. Stress the other. Causes for my sleeplessness.

When I first went to my PCP for my leg pain, the nurse walked me to the scale. “Wait until it says zero zero,” she said.

I heard the words clearly, but the message did not compute. I stepped onto the scale while it was still recalibrating.

“You did too soon!” she said.

I stepped off, the message having been delivered, and then I did it right.

“Pain distorts everything,” I said.

And it does.
It distorts your blood pressure.
It distorts your pulse rate.
It distorts your breathing.
It distorts your motion.
It distorts your awareness.
Its distorts your sleep.
It distorts your life.

Everything becomes about controlling the pain. Everything revolves around that goal. Those of us with RA pain, or other chronic pain, know this intimately. The invisible pain that we sometimes, or always, live with.

I am lucky. I rarely have RA pain nowadays, strictly speaking. And when I do, when something flares up, I zap it with a few days’ worth of Prednisone. My rheumatologist has me keep it on hand. “You know what to do,” he says, relying on my years of nursing experience. He lets me be my own nurse. I am, in essence, my only patient now.

But this nerve pain thumbs its nose at steroids. I did two Medrol Dosepaks in two consecutive weeks. Each a six-day course. With not much noticeable improvement at the time, but now two weeks after that, I am much better. Before on a scale of one to ten, I rated my pain at twenty. Now it hovers at two to three. For short, blissful periods it drops to zero. And at others it can climb to five or six, so yes, much better.

The problem is the lull fools me. I do stuff. I cook dinner. I have the audacity to change the bed, seeking help for that fourth corner. That tug that I know I shouldn’t do. I do laundry, picking up nothing heavier than a single item at a time. I wash dishes by hand, always a therapeutic exercise for me. The only minus I perceive is the stooping and bending to load the dishwasher.

Though bending in itself relieves the pressure. In the morning, when the pain is at its apogee, I bend and grab my ankles. I drop my hands to the floor and hold the pose. I rinse, lather, and repeat. The best relief is when I do it in a hot shower, ahhhh, hydrotherapy.

But if I do too much, the next morning when I take those first few excruciating steps of the day, I’d say about twenty, I should count them next time, distract myself from the pain, it is so much worse. But once I get those first steps out of the way, the pain starts to ebb. The tide recedes little by little. And I can walk unaided for the rest of the day.

Yesterday, a friend compared me to Sisyphus, but I disagree. His boulder didn’t get smaller.

Today, I awoke at seven, when normally the pain wakes me by five. And the pain registers at about one. I could walk unaided from the moment I left my bed. It could be improvement, or it could be that I did nothing yesterday. Either way, I am eternally grateful.

I am definitely sleeping for longer and longer periods at night. So, I’m thinking I should restock my bedside drawer with more Refresh eyedrops. Whoever thought I would be looking forward to artificial tears when I’ve shed plenty of real ones these past few weeks.

I have found ways to cope, and music is my crutch. Without it , I don’t think I could cope with anything. I finally set up an iTunes account and have been giving my credit card a workout, setting up a playlist to help me start my day. And sometimes end my day.

This song, with a Texas bent, of course, I dedicate to the relationship between my body and me. Yes, stand by me.

Sigh-Atica Part 2

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My pretty IV. Never had one that’s pink and purple before.

just like I never had sciatica land me in the hospital before.

it’s been a wild two weeks. I had faith that my doctor’s conservative treatment of steroids and nerve pain medication at bedtime would do the trick.

just like I had faith in him. For the past twenty years or more.

Exactly one week later on Monday, I returned to his office, after making it clear to his staff that it was either his office or urgent care.

Can you be here within the hour? they said. I could and I did. He suggested that we increase the nightly nerve pain medication dose and that I start a narcotic to treat the pain that had settled like hot daggers in my calf. Plus Motrin 600 mg every 8 hours for pain as well. And he would order an MRI.

I said, what about the inflammation? He said since the steroids didn’t work, why repeat them? He said that the Motrin would help with that too. Now, he knows who he is talking to. I gave him a look and all he said to me then was, “OK, Irma?”

Since this wasn’t McDonald’s, I couldn’t change my order at will. I took my prescriptions and limped to my car where my husband waited. I scheduled the MRI, the soonest was Thursday, while in the car waiting for prescriptions to be filled.

The pain was doing me in. Especially in the mornings. I don’t cry easily, but I did a lot of crying Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning. Bent over whatever countertop I could get to, I bawled with the pain, a walker at my side. We ended up with two of them from when my husband had an MI five years ago, and boy, did they come in handy now.

I ended up taking one Motrin 600 mg. It tore my stomach up. I took it with trepidation, but I was desperate so I took the plunge. I lived to regret it. The narcotic he put me on was like taking water for the pain I had. I sought relief from hot showers, letting the water soothe my leg. And from my trusty heating pad, half expecting to incur 3rd-degree burns before it was all over. Sleep? What was that?

I made it to the MRI on Thursday evening. I was glad it was an evening appointment because that was when my pain was near tolerable, but still, lying in that constricting tube with my eyes tightly shut, my ears plugged with soft foam plugs, and covered with heavy headphones that were supposed to provide music, music that was overpowered by the loud clicking and clanging noises of the machine, all I could think of was that my leg was hurting me. I had to lie flat on my back, and that position was not the most forgiving. And I had to lie still, 30 minutes the tech said. I couldn’t move, even if I’d been able to, wedged in as I was.

That night I made an effort to sleep, but by 4 a.m., when I’d struggled to the bathroom, I lay in bed and cried. I knew the gig was up. It was time for the ER. I took one of my fake pain pills, and gave it an hour. Meanwhile, my husband was up and ready to go. Don’t push me, I said.

We got to the ER at 7 a.m. and it was blissfully empty. Not a soul except the staff. That was a bonus in this covid age. I was in the back getting an IV started within 10 minutes. My nurse was this cute little guy that could have been my son. He pushed Dilaudid and Decadron into my vein and smoothly removed those boiling, hot daggers from my leg. I almost cried again with relief. They’d been in there for over a week.

I had a barrage of doctors come by. They all agreed on the treatment, steroids to reduce the inflammation around the nerve, potent narcotics for pain, a strong muscle relaxer, double the administration of the nerve pain medication, among other meds, and admission until pain controlled sufficiently to go home.

A neurosurgeon had been called and he was the first to arrive. I saw the MRI, he said. You have a slipped disc which is causing pressure on the nerve. It’s a slight protrusion he said, but you have degenerative changes and I would not want to go in there to fix it. Thanks, RA! was my first thought. But I didn’t want him to go in there to fix it, either.

An injection into the nerve was also suggested, but I decided to make that plan B. We would go with the meds, body mechanics, exercises, and physical therapy first.

Last night, I had another great nurse. We spent half the night talking. When the day nurse had asked me what I wanted to share about myself on the info board in my room, I said I have RA, thinking clinically. And she said no, something personal, so I blurted out what I like to do best, reading and writing. He noted that and the conversation started from there and went on most of the night.

He held my hand on the way to the bathroom and back. This was an observation unit where the rooms do not have their own bathrooms. It wasn’t far from my room, but it might as well have been miles away. And once on the way back, which was the most painful part as my nerve was now awakened to the fact that I was upright and moving, I said the bad word that rhymes with truck.

I immediately said sorry, but he started laughing. By this time we felt we knew each other, and he said, I never thought I would hear that word from you. And then I started to laugh, in-between gasps of pain.

I fell asleep between 3 and 6 a.m., when he woke me up for my meds. And later, when I managed to get to the bathroom alone as the day nurse didn’t respond to my call, I discovered that half my pain was gone! It only hurt from the knee down and that was cut in half as well. It was hallelujah time, and time to arrange for going home. The meds had made progress in less than a day.

The board in my room.

Sigh-Atica

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Photo credit: Emilia Navarro, Atlantic Ocean. This shot reminds me of my current fire (sciatica) in an otherwise calm sea.

Ouch and double ouch!

I activated the launch sequence by being butt-in-chair writing furiously for the last few weeks.

Not to mention the sewing and the quilting. How do people who work in offices five days a week do it? How do long-haul truck drivers?

Meds are on board and heating pad at the ready. Will have to write standing up. If it was good enough for Papa . . . Can’t let the muse escape.

Y’all take care.

Plantar Fasciitis and Me

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Imagine a translucent marble stuck between you and the floor. It’s settled within your left heel and it goes everywhere you go. Most times it rolls into the inner aspect of your heel, other times it plays in the middle, and then just for fun it will toy with the outer rim for a bit.

You’re never quite sure where it will be, or if it will be. In the mornings, you sit up in bed and study the benign tile floor. The floor that used to feel so cool and smooth beneath your naked feet. Can I chance it, you think. Can I, should I, try walking the six steps to the bathroom without my shoes? It’s such an innocent request, to indulge a penchant for walking barefoot in the house.

You swing your legs over and gingerly place your feet on the floor. You stand, and oh, there it is. The marble says hello, and your shoes are in the closet, so you hobble on to the bathroom, careening and holding on to the wall, the vanity, the doorjamb of the bathroom door. To anyone looking, you would appear to be really old, or really drunk.

Once done with your morning ablution, you sway into the walk-in closet to retrieve your shoes. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Every step is a penance but what you are paying for you do not know.

You slip your feet into the warm embrace of your shoes and find that your prayers have been heard. You can walk upright and steady again. For the moment, the marble is neutralized.

(Some info on this condition and on foot pain with RA)

crocsI don’t mean to sound like an advertisement but, truly, these Crocs are the only shoes I can walk in for long periods. They have a cushioned sole akin to a shock absorber, an arch support, a heel cup that cradles and protects, and beading that massages my feet. The straps are elastic so they can never bind. And best of all, they are light, practically weightless, unlike me.

I currently own four pairs, two pairs stockpiled for later, because I don’t know how long this condition might last and I don’t want to run the risk of not being able to replace them. I use one pair for home, and one for running errands. They look great with my jeans, but even if they didn’t, I wouldn’t care.

It’s been several months now, and from my reading I find that I can be careening and swaying for up to one year. During my NYC trip last month, I had to take one day off to rest my foot. The pain was exquisitely excruciating, or excruciatingly exquisite, but definitely well worth it.

In two weeks, I will be on the road again, hopefully in time to welcome  a new grandbaby, and to reconnect with my lovely Carmen. There won’t be many opportunities to sit still with my feet up, but again, so very, very worth it.

Nightgowns and Shoes

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I’ve been on a nightgown-and-shoe-buying kick lately. I know, strange bedfellows. I don’t think I want to know how many nightgowns I’ve bought, but I know how many pairs of shoes, three.

Why this particular bent? It does go deeper than mere materialism and is far more consequential than just acquiring more to stuff in my closet, for I soon realized I’d been subconsciously heeding the call for rest and comfort.

What triggered this consumption? The Great Prednisone Failure of 2015. My failure, my 2015. The experiment was a total bust. The pain came back. The hands, the feet, the general malaise. After a few weeks off Prednisone my body sat up and noticed. Hey! What happened to Pred?

It didn’t just beg the question; it screamed it. So I scurried into the safety zone, the metaphorical orange-cone ring made up of little white pills.

“You know what to do,” my rheumy said when I confessed my shortcoming. He proceeded to share how he handles flares with the help of our common little frenemy.

I nodded. Yes, the tiny, precious pills that can wreak havoc within your body in so many ways, and in the process grant you the ability to get up in the morning without feeling like a tin woman who needs a squirt of oil into every single cell.

“I want quality,” I said. “Not quantity.” Now it was his turn to nod. I’d rather have five good years and not twenty bad ones. He understood.

In the midst of renewed pain, sleep took supreme importance. Sleep is a great pain reliever, if you can get it. And so in direct correlation, I concentrated on updating my sleepwear.

Nightgowns are the only thing I like to sleep in. Sometimes I prefer silky soft, sometimes cottony soft. The style must needs be flattering, comfortable, and not bunch up under me. Sometimes I swear I’m related to The Princess and the Pea character. Every little wrinkle in the sheets drives me mad and I have to pull it straight. I’ve made my husband promise that he will keep my bed tidy when the day comes that I can’t do it myself. I doubt he will, but it makes me feel better to know he promised. 🙂

The brand matters not, so much as the cut and the fabric. Color matters in that it affects mood. I tend toward black, so refined, so elegant and sexy, too, because why shouldn’t you look nice while you’re sleeping?

And if sleeping is important, getting up and staying up is much more so, and that’s where the shoes come in.

I mentioned in a previous post that I am partial to Clarks. One day, I came across the most comfortable pair in the entire universe, not hyperbole I assure you, at least according to these feet of mine.

Their only drawback was that they were only available in white and it was way before Memorial Day, when I would have license to wear them according to fashion dictum. I couldn’t remember the last time I owned a pair of white shoes. It might have been back when I was wearing saddle shoes to grade school.

But there they were, on sale, and they fit deliciously. Or as Billy would say, they felt mahvelous. I took them home and when I went online to search for a pair in my signature black, there were none to be had in my size. I did find a similar style with the same cushioned footbed.  When they arrived I was pleased to discover they fit just as mahvelously. Since then, I’ve added a third pair in beige and am debating whether I need the navy ones, too.

Perhaps I don’t, after all black goes with everything, and pain-free feet go with eeeeverything. My heels don’t hurt anymore, no matter how much I walk in these shoes. And they were. The pain intense, indescribable, every step jarring needles poking me.

These sandals take me everywhere. I dress them up and dress them down. Whether it’s a leisurely stroll down the Art District, a dinner/movie/drinks date or just chugging up and down the grocery store aisles, these babies come through.

I am back on a very low dose of Prednisone, a tiny buffer between me and the pain. He mentioned injectable Methotrexate as a possibility. I said I would take it under advisement. We shall see, but we shall see in comfort.

"I wanna put on my, my, my, my, my, boogie shoes." -- K.C. and The Sunshine Band

“I wanna put on my, my, my, my, my, boogie shoes.” — K.C. and The Sunshine Band

System Glitches

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I went to spend a week with my precious little Carmen. I tried to keep up with my reading while I was gone, hard do to with a two-year-old commanding all your attention, and I went with no illusions of being able to post anything. By the time I got to my room at the end of the day I was pooped and ready to recoup for another twelve-hour day. I took only my tablet with me, which is serviceable for reading but not very user-friendly for writing; it’s gotten slower than molasses. I’ve now replaced it with a new one. This one is Speedy Gonzales compared to the old one.

My laptop is on its way out as well. I hope I didn’t jinx it by typing that. It’s my writing tool and I have no idea what to replace it with. I don’t want to be rushed into anything so I suppose I will have to shop around and make a decision. That way I will be ready when it never comes back from its update, which it’s threatened to do a couple of times but the Geek Squad coaxed it back.

I, on the other hand, managed to come back from my overnight updates every dawn without any coaxing. Come 7 a.m., I was ready to go. There was only one application on my personal hard drive that wasn’t (isn’t) up to par; the one that powers my left wrist. At least I can give thanks it isn’t my left foot.

I’ve learned to compensate for it, though, by instinctively using techniques that spare the full use of my wrist. After all, I’ve had since August to come up with a plan B to circumvent this little glitch in the system.

It did hurt more than usual, at times giving me sharp, continuous, stabbing pains that made me imagine I was reliving a variant of the Psycho shower scene, music and all. I would grit my teeth and groan while grabbing my wrist and pressing down on the swollen part through the brace I wore. Somehow that made it feel better after a bit, or it could have been my imagination still at work.

Poor Carmen would stare at me with her big, hazel eyes and say, “Your arm hurts, ‘huela?” “Yes, baby,” I’d squeak out, pushing on my wrist with all the strength my right hand could muster.

But I remained on weaning doses of Prednisone. Never once was I tempted to increase the dose to give myself a hit, or I should say, an extra hit. In fact, I only took an extra week’s worth with me just in case, which amounted to a mere 25 mg that I never took. But it truly wasn’t all that brave of me to leave the whole bottle behind. My doctor is a phone call away and CVS is ubiquitous.

The week flew by when I measure it by Carmen time. When I measure it by work pending, it moved along at a turtle’s pace. But all good things must and do come to an end. I’m back at my desk and running at full steam. If only my laptop deigns to keep up with me. One thing for sure, there’s no rise of the machines here.

Sigh-

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-atica.

The beast has been tamed. Though not altogether vanquished, its growls have been reduced to whimpers.

I had a total of four physical therapy sessions that boiled downed to learning some exercises to strengthen the muscles of my legs and limit pressure on the sciatic nerve itself. They all happened before I flew to Los Angeles exactly three weeks ago, a five-hour plane ride that I was dreading, and which dread spurred me to hurry up and do something!

The flights were not fun, there and back, but were thankfully direct so were over and done with as quickly as humanly possible. Aisle seats helped a lot as I didn’t have to maneuver that tiny space between seat rows.

Sitting hurt, but standing up hurt worse. At least, for that first step or two. I managed to get through the four days we were there fairly well. The ache a dull roar down my leg. But I’m very glad we went because we got to see my father-in-law in good spirits, and albeit with a cane, walking better than I was.

I held off taking Prednisone during the trip, but after flying back on a redeye, and with the three-hour time difference, the jet lag threatened to bury me. So I caved and did a six-day hit (20, 20, 10, 10, 5, 5 mg). That did the trick and also soothed away the egregious pain, for the most part.

I remain quite conscious of that leg, or that nerve, I should say. I turn over in bed with great caution. The wrong move sent an electrifying jolt down my leg and left a painful residue behind. For hours and sometimes for the whole rest of the day or night.

I’m careful not to sit too long either, which kind of puts a kink in the works since I work sitting down. I keep hearing my PCP’s admonition as he scribbled away on his Rx pad, “Don’t sit!”

This has also put my home downsizing project on hold. No more climbing the stepladder, no more lifting heavy books, no more pushing furniture around. Now I look at our record collection longingly. Yes, vinyl records, about 200 or more taking up space. They need to go into another room where I can’t see them anymore, as I’m not allowed to get rid of them. I guess I could carry them there one by one. Two by two.

Since I couldn’t sit and I couldn’t lift, I turned to culling my photo collection, and framing some of my more treasured moments. This fun trip down my personal memory lane was facilitated by using my cutting table as a work area. It’s high enough that I can stand and cut out countless quilt pieces without incurring miserable lower back pain.

I have not returned to PT, though they’ve been calling me. I don’t see the need. I should probably tell them that. I think I derived enough from those sessions to basically practice prophylaxis and prevent another attack of sciatica in future.

Still, I thought more info wouldn’t hurt so I bought a book last night. It’s written by a sciatica sufferer and at a whopping $4.99 for an eBook, I expected a lot more than I got. True, clinically, I realized I would know quite a bit, but at the very least I expected something that couldn’t be read in one sitting. What was even more disappointing is that it could have used some editing and a whole lot of proofreading. It feels like I threw my money away, but I guess, caveat emptor.

Though my screaming leg has shushed, I remain vigilant. And for now on standby, with a bag mentally packed. We have received word that my father-in-law is failing. He has battled multiple myeloma for several years and it appears his time is near.

graduation

Big Al with us at my husband’s graduation from Texas A&M Maritime Academy. A long, long time ago. 

A Ten Milligram Day

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Yesterday I had one of those under-water-death-fatigue day. I treated it with an extra dose of strawberries and whipped cream. And while scarfing that down I wondered, if strawberries have anti-inflammatory properties and sugar exacerbates your symptoms, do they cancel each other out?

At the moment I didn’t care. It tasted so good, it made me forget that I was moving in slow-mo. And that it’s kinda hard to chase a toddler in slow-mo. But I figured out a solution to that, too. I don’t.

She loves being chased. It’s a game, but not to Abuela. At least not on these kind of days, so I just stand still and say, bye bye. She comes running back to me because the one thing she loves more than being chased is being included.

Bye, bye is what I also say to RA, but it too comes running back to me. Sometimes with a vengeance.

I am not an athlete, unless you count raising four kids, running a household and keeping up with a profession athleticism. Nor am I a warrior, though I like to think I have warrior blood in me.

photo (15)So I don’t know how to classify what happened to my right hand two years ago when it swelled up to the point of being useless for a month. Is it a sports injury or a war injury? But injured it is and every so often it swells up again to remind me.

I keep yearly photographic evidence of my hands. To see how they are holding up under duress. Today I can see the lumps and bumps between the metacarpals, the joints at the base of the fingers. The swelling is obvious.

The pain not so much.photo (13)

The dilemma this morning was how to untwist the cap and break the seal off  a new gallon jug of tea. I’d decided to up my Prednisone from the daily 2.5 to 10 mg. A veritable shot in arm, you might say.

But first I had to grip that sucker and twist for all my hand is worth, today. I can tell you it hurt like a **** but I am nothing if not persistent. It took three attempts that left me with the reddened imprint of the cap on my palm.

photo (12)

The Arthritis Foundation sent me a little gadget to open stuff. I remembered I’d packed it and ran and got it. Unfortunately,  it doesn’t work on caps this size.

photo (14)

 

 

I could have used this back in the day when I had to ask my nursing staff to open my bottles of lemonade. I hated the thought of having to ask for help, but RA makes you humble.

It also makes you stubborn and determined. I would have my glass of tea!

And I did.

Now to wait for the extra dose of Prednisone to do its job. I think I feel it working already. Or maybe it’s the hot water I ran over my hand for five minutes. Who would’ve thought washing dishes was therapeutic? Or maybe it’s the typing. Exercising my fingers goes a long way toward reducing the pain. Idleness is the bane.

photo (17)But there is no time for idleness now.

Not with these footsies to keep track of.

 

 

 

One Quarter Inch

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One of the most unexplainable things is hand pain. Undescribable and indescribable.

Another is the absence of hand pain.

You cannot know one without knowing the other. If you’ve never had hand pain, the kind that makes you want to chop them off, you cannot relate to hands that have stopped hurting.

The pain consumes you and sabotages every act you engage in, or try to engage in. It’s depressive and depressing. “I can see you’re not feeling well,” my doctor said a few moments after walking into the exam room on my last visit.

Body language. My body had spoken volumes without my saying more than hello to him. I smiled. No need to add words to what my body screamed out loud.

Later, when he went to bend my fingers one by one, as he always begins his exam, he noted that there was more tension. My fingers were harder to bend. More tension in fiction is great, in my fingers, not so much.

But, I refused to give in to it. During this flare-up, I made two quilts with those hurting hands. Hands that could, once again, barely touch forefinger to thumb.

So while making this last red and white quilt, I came to a decision. I would make a concession. I would no longer do hand-stitched bindings. Instead, I would machine stitch them. And that meant I would have to cut the binding strips wider, not 2 and 1/2 inches, but 2 and 3/4 inches wide.

These days I am feeling lots better, My fingers are much more pliable, and machine stitching the bindings will speed things up, making me far more productive as I head into the holiday season.  But now, I have an exact measure as to how much this latest skirmish has cost me. How much ground I concede to RA this time.  Exactly one quarter inch.

quilt

Inspired by this site.

quilt

A wall hanging I made for my granddaughter’s first birthday. How time flies.