Living with Scleroderma

Reflections on the Messy Complexity of Chronicity

hands

Miraculous

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As of today, I have five dives left. My progress has been striking. I am touch-typing this post with five fingers between my two hands. Grafts on my right pinky and left middle finger have fully healed, as has the flap on my right middle finger. My left index graft is close to healed, though it’s taking longer because of a probable infection that is now under control. My right thumb is closing up, even as a second ulcer with calcium deposits opened in the tip last week.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy notwithstanding, calcinosis remains one of my biggest challenges. My fingers are loaded with the little gray pits, and one is rising to the surface of my right index finger at just the wrong pressure point. But there is no cure for this, only patience and constant tending. Meanwhile, the worst of this marathon is behind me, thank goodness.

A friend asked me what I would do with all the time freed up in the morning, after the HBO ends next Thursday. Well, for one thing, I hope to get a little more sleep! It will be a pleasure not to have to head out to the hospital on a cold wintry morning at 7 o’clock. My goal is to use the regained three hours for my fiction writing. I’ve had to put this aside for the duration—filling the gap by listening to fine fiction via audio books while lying in the HBO chamber. Good to get back to my own creative writing, especially now that I can type again.

It will take some time to fully adjust to my “revised” hands. I’m still figuring out how much pressure I can exert on the two fingers that now have fused bones where knuckles used to be. I have next to no feeling in the grafts, so I have to learn how to interpret sensations deeper in these fingers—and avoid damaging what I don’t immediately notice.

The finger with the flap presents its own unique challenge: since the skin that was once the side of the finger is now wrapped over the top of the amputated tip, the nerves send confusing signals to my brain. The finger is also notably shorter and stubbier, which requires some readjustment to reach. I’m not quite sure what/where I’m feeling. So, practice, practice, practice, and my brain, I trust, will rewire.

But I remain amazed to have come through this eight month ordeal with functioning hands and ten fingers. This evening is the eighth night of Hanukkah. For me and my family, it is a most fitting way to mark my miraculous recovery.

I will be traveling over the weekend and taking a break next week from blogging. To you, Dear Reader, best wishes for a wonderful holiday season filled with joy, love, health and healing.

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: Element5 Digital

Tradeoffs

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After two dozen dives, my hands continue to heal, thank goodness. I’m typing this post with a few fingers on each hand, instead of poking away with a stylus.

But I am also beginning to experience one of the side-effects of HBO therapy—blurred vision. For more than a week, I’ve noticed that road signs look a bit fuzzy when I’ve driven home from the hospital. Then, last week, I realized that my computer glasses no longer were the right correction. Instead, I needed to wear my regular bifocals and sit a bit farther back from the screen.

Over the weekend, to my dismay, things got more blurred. I can certainly see, but when we went to the movies Saturday night, the screen was a bit fuzzy. I did some long distance driving on Sunday to be sure I could still handle it, and I could—but needed Al’s help to read signs.

Fortunately, I still have my most recent pair of glasses, which have a stronger correction for nearsightedness. As I’ve discovered over the past few annual check-ups at the optometrist, aging can improve vision of distant objects. So using my old prescription has compensated for the worst of the problem—for the time being.

I’m told it could continue to get worse, in which case I’ll need to get a new prescription and a pair of cheap glasses to tide me over until I finish my dives. Based on my discussion with the team last Thursday, we’ve agreed to apply for insurance coverage for 10 more sessions, to be sure my grafts heal fully. That will take me into the last week of December.

The vision issues, like my hearing issues that have required temporary ear tubes, should resolve within six to eight weeks after I finish diving. I’m hoping it doesn’t get worse. But it could.

Even still, I’d rather stick with the treatment. Too much is at stake for healing my hands, especially as the weather gets colder. If I have to get driving glasses for a few months, so be it. Fortunately, I had a previously scheduled eye dilation appointment with my optometrist last week, and everything else is fine. As for my farsighted correction, I’m better off with my current prescription. I guess I’ll be switching back and forth.

Miraculous as the HBO therapy has been for me, nothing is ever that easy.

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: Clem Onojeghuo

Fingers Crossed

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So, now things get a little more complicated. Last Thursday, when the Wound Center team checked my progress, the vascular surgeon thought that my left middle finger tip was colonized by an opportunistic bacteria common in wounds called pseudomonas. What I had taken to be some incidental spots had turned a pale green, which she said was a tell-tale sign. No pain or other issues, so I did my dressings and then checked it again that evening. It seemed to have spread more across the upper layer of the graft, which is dead skin.

Next day, I told the team, but no ID specialist was available to look. So, they scheduled a visit with the covering doc (mine is, of course, away for the week of Thanksgiving) for Monday morning. Meanwhile they recommended soaking the tip in a medical grade bleach. After just a minute, I was able to remove all of the green growth with a cotton swab. Powerful stuff.

They gave me some to take home and use again on Sunday. This time, nothing came off, and I couldn’t really tell if the discoloration was white or something else. Monday morning, I came in a little later for my HBO therapy, as planned, to give the ID doc time to look at the finger before my dive.

However . . . due to some miscommunication, when paged he said he’d never seen me before and didn’t know why he was being asked to consult, and went ahead with regular appointments. Aargh! More calls back and forth with the nurse who’d set up the appointment for me, and she got him to come later, after my dive. Of course, the wait took an extra hour.

He was apologetic when he came, very nice, thoughtful, accompanied by two students. However, he could not give me any firm answer about what may or may not be discoloring my graft. Only way to really know, he said, would be to debride the finger and do a deep tissue culture—which, of course, would mean removing the graft. And antibiotic treatment at this point could involve IVs, which I really don’t want. Not going there, not now, we agreed. Better to stick with the bleach and keep close watch. So long as I don’t have pain, any redness from cellulitis, swelling or fever, there’s no reason to do more.

After he left, the nurse suggested checking if I could see my hand surgeon before the holiday, to get his input. Fortunately, since they know me well in his office, his medical assistant squeezed me in for Tuesday afternoon, the only day he’s in this week. Good relationships really count.

I was not in a great mood Monday afternoon. But then I took a step back. After all, a surface culture on my opposite middle finger, the one that was actually weeping goo a couple of weeks ago, had tested positive for pseudomonas, and nothing came of it. The antibiotic I’ve been on, true to my ID specialist’s prediction, took care of the infection.

Plus, my open wounds were growing all sorts of stuff prior to my first surgery, as demonstrated by cultures done at that time. None made any difference in my outcome. Best to keep vigilant and monitor symptoms rather than fret over what-ifs, or do unnecessary procedures that would make matters worse.

I’m just grateful that I’m being monitored so closely by experts and not dealing with this all on my own. I’m also grateful that I continue to make more progress—this past week, I was able to fill my car with gas, lift a mattress to make a hospital corner, stir onions in a pan on a hot stove, and begin to write by hand again. That’s what I’ll be focused on this Thanksgiving.

And so, Dear Reader, I hope you have much to celebrate this holiday, as well. And for all of us, here’s to good healing and good health.

P.S. I’m happy to report from my Tuesday appointment that Dr. S thought my finger was fine. He said that grafts are “biological dressings” that protect new skin growing beneath. Not surprising that something could grow on the surface, as well. Given no worrisome symptoms of an infection, I should just keep doing what I’m doing. Other fingers continue to look good, in his opinion. Thank goodness—and it pays to remember that specialists know their specialties but can misinterpret what falls under another’s specialty! Seventeen dives and counting.

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: Nathan Anderson

6 Down, 24 to Go

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I finished my sixth hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) dive on Monday. Already, it’s becoming routine. But getting to that point took all of last week. Here are some lessons learned, so far:

  • It’s really important to have some meaningful entertainment when you are confined to your back, lying inside a glass-and-steel chamber for 2 hours and 20 minutes. I decided to immerse in the best fiction writing I could find at the library. Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, narrated by the author, proved to be the perfect choice. Her language is magnificent, and her artistry is both an inspiration and a thought-provoking guide to revising the first draft of my novel (finished in late winter, incubating since then due to all the hand mishegas).
  • Definitely go with a light breakfast for an early morning dive. I do not want to have to take a bathroom break in the midst of the dive—that would either truncate the day’s session or require a second dive/reverse of pressure. Too anxiety-provoking.
  • Meditation breathing really helps to counter claustrophobia. During my third dive last week, I suddenly began to feel trapped in the chamber. Focusing on my breath enabled me to calm myself and focus on the audio novel.
  • Bring a granola bar or other healthy snack for after the dive. I have yet to do this, but I realize it would be a good idea. I’m very hungry when finished, and I still have to spend nearly two hours redoing all my dressings. The dive increases your metabolism rate.
  • Ear tubes—which I had inserted on Friday—definitely ease the pressure on eustachian tubes during the dive (in the first 15 minutes or so, pressure in the chamber increases to 2 atmospheres, the equivalent of being 35 feet below sea level). However, the tubes have also caused some additional muffling of my hearing, to my dismay. My right ear cleared a bit over the weekend, so I no longer sound to myself as if I’m talking under water. But my left has yet to clear, and I can hear my pulse in my left ear.
  • Sometimes I am very energized when I come home, and other days, I need a nap. No clear rhyme or reason. But I have been able to put in a productive afternoon of work every day, so far.
  • The therapy works.
    • Exhibit A: I have had an intractable ulcer on my left inside ankle for almost a year, which had mostly healed over the summer, but was persistently flaking and threatening to reopen. After two days of HBO, the skin was completely healed. Miraculous.
    • Exhibit B: The donor site for my skin grafts on my right thigh shrank by about 50 percent last week. I was finally able to flake off the very dry scab Sunday, which had become quite itchy.
    • Exhibit C: My finger pain has decreased even more than it had from just the grafts. I am now able to drive again. The vibrations of the steering wheel no longer hurt my fingers. I put this to the test on Sunday and was able to drive us to a wedding over an hour away, and back. First long-distance highway drive since July.
    • Exhibit D: My health care team unanimously thinks my grafts are healing well. I spiked an infection in my right middle finger, so am back on antibiotics. But it appears to be healing again, thank goodness.

Tuesday morning is Dive Number 7. I plan to vote in our local elections on my way home. I’m grateful that I feel up to it. Whatever your health circumstances, I hope you do, too.

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: The HBO chamber I’m using looks a lot like this image from Long Beach Medical Center in Long Beach, California.

So Far, So Good

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A week has passed since my second hand surgery, and I’m pleased to report that I am bouncing back more quickly than I expected. Skin grafts are healing well, and my appeal was approved for hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

It’s been quite the ride. For the first few days, my hands were protected by huge padded splints that went halfway down my forearms. My pain level was quite manageable, thank goodness, but I could not do a thing for myself.

You really don’t realize how much you depend on your hands until you can’t use them at all. I felt like a baby. Al did yeoman duty, feeding me, wiping me and washing me, all with patience and good humor. He is a good man. We were both blessed and energized by caring friends who brought delicious home-cooked meals all week, and by many prayers for healing and kind wishes.

Everything changed on Thursday, when Dr. S removed the splints. He checked the graft on my left middle finger (he deemed it good) and the flap of skin that is now sealing my right middle finger (also deemed good). The other two grafts he left alone for inspection on Monday. But I had my hands back.

As soon as I came home from my appointment on Thursday, I was able to sit at my computer and get some work done. Even as I was tired, it was a tremendous relief to be able to use my hands again, with care, and regain some independence. I’m not ready to drive, yet, but I hope to as soon as I feel confident that my grafts have stabilized.

When Dr. S checked the grafts on Monday, he was more than pleased. The skin was nice and pink, a major accomplishment, given my poor circulation. I’ve been keeping my hands warm using heat packs on my wrists. Since I can’t put on my wrist warmers right now (bulky bandages), I have been wrapping the heat pacs into ace bandages around each wrist. Works just fine.

I still have two pins in my left index and right pinky. These will come out soon. Monday afternoon, I had smaller splints made to stabilize the three grafted fingers as they heal. I’m still figuring out how best to care for the “donor site” on my right thigh, a two-by-four-inch rectangle where a thin layer of skin was removed for the grafts, but it appears to be healing slowly.

Also on Monday, I got the green light on my hyperbaric oxygen therapy appeal. This was especially surprising, because our health insurance had called the end of last week, claiming that we had never applied for prior authorization, so no appeal was appropriate. I referred them to our hospital wound center contact who had, indeed, filed the request that had, indeed, been declined. I also explained that the HBO would probably save them money because it would spare me more surgeries, if it works. That argument may have done the trick, because they never even bothered with a peer-to-peer review. In any case, I start next week.

It’s a lot to absorb. I’m extremely grateful that my wounds, now covered with my own skin, are less painful, and that the risk of having skin grafts has been, so far, worth taking. One step at a time. . . .

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.