Now that I’m starting to get back into a regular schedule, it’s a relief to be able to focus on work and other writing, and forget about my hands for a few hours. They do have a way of reminding me, however, that they need attention. As in beginning to tingle and twinge within a half-hour of time to take my pain medicine. Who needs to set a cell-phone alert? It reminds me of how our dear departed golden retriever, Ginger, used to bop my fingers off the keyboard with her nose when it was time to take a walk.
I wish it were still her, and not my fingers, calling the shots. One of the hardest aspects of this whole ordeal is simply having to accept the fact that I cannot escape it. I can’t make my fingers heal any faster than they are able. I’m certainly not going to cut them all off. And I’m not about to roll up in a ball and hibernate until it’s over. I can only sit with it, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
I boost my spirits by celebrating small victories — the ability to make a few notes by hand, regained stamina to sit at my desk for another hour, a creative solution to cracking an egg and separating the white from the yoke without messing up my bandages.
Scleroderma is a disease that makes you feel stuck in your own skin. I remember that sensation all too well from the early years when my illness was still in a very active phase. About three decades ago, my skin had tightened halfway up my forearms, and I was beginning to have discomfort blinking. The veins were not visible on the backs of my hands. My skin felt like leather that had been wet and then dried in the sun. It was terrifying. Mercifully, treatment with D-Penicillamine, since discredited in the research literature (but I am convinced it saved me), reversed the tightening. Although my skin is not normal, it has been decades since I’ve felt so trapped within it.
Now, I feel stuck in a different way — stuck in what feels like an endless cycle of doctors appointments, dressing changes, pills upon pills, and the sheer inability to do what I want to do the way I want to do it. That, plus the discomfort and pain that is just what I have to live with for who knows how long. It is very frustrating. Meditation and good, healthy distractions, like getting back to my creative writing, are among the best solutions. Hugs from Al help a great deal, too.
When I dip into the news, a practice I am trying to limit to reading reliable sources and listening to thoughtful podcasts in order to keep my sanity, I feel a different intensity of stuck-ness. How is it possible that we are actually seriously discussing the possibility of nuclear war with North Korea? What can any of us do to stop it? I can still remember Cold War air raid drills when I was in grammar school, kneeling between classmates in the school hallway with one hand under my forehead and the other on the back of my head. As if that was really going to save any of us from the A-bomb. The fact that reckless, macho-on-steroids quips and put-downs are defining this path we are on, rather than serious diplomacy, boggles the mind.
In a very strange way, my hand saga provides a welcome distraction of stuck-ness from all of this. How ironic. At least, when it comes to my own health, I have some degree of control over the outcome. God willing, the adults will take charge and walk us all back from the brink of an unthinkable fate.
Evelyn Herwitz blogs weekly about living fully with chronic disease, the inside of baseballs, turtles and frogs, J.S. Bach, the meaning of life and whatever else she happens to be thinking about at livingwithscleroderma.com.
Image Credit: Nick Abrams
Leave a Reply