Your eyes do not deceive you

That's right...you are looking at PROGRESS. Not much, but progress none the less.

I went to the orthopedic surgeon yesterday and guess what? He doesn't think my elbow is fractured. He thinks my wrist may be, he says it is definitely sprained, but the elbow he thinks is probably okay.

If this seems incredibly fuzzy to you, it is to me too.

However what this means is no more big honkin' splint from mid upper arm to fingertips! When the doctor peeled that sucker off my arm, I felt like kissing him. It lay there, with it's various components of stretchy bandages, fuzzy padding, and hard fiberglass, looking as loathsome as it had felt while I wore it.

If you want to torture me someday, just wrap my fingers together like that...they were squished and so uncomfortable I was pulling up on the bandages just so I could wiggle them. And when the stretch bandages started to unravel themselves, I finally decided to amend the splint where my hand was by tearing out some of the fuzzy packing and wrapping the bandaging a little looser. Even so, when the doctor took it off, my tortured fingers could not even bend down to the palm...it took a bit to get the flexibility back in them.

After a few more xrays, which apparently did not make anything crystal clear, the doctor decided to let me have the use of my elbow back so it would loosen up (still can't straighten it or bend it totally) and to have the hand therapy place make me a nice wrist brace, which you see here. It's a lot like the one I used to have when I had tendonitis. I got to pick which color straps and I picked purple, just to be outrageous.

I'll go back in three weeks to see how I'm healing up. In the meantime I have to wear the brace when I'm using my hand strenuously (I decided typing qualifies and so does stamping), and I have to keep it on while I sleep, but otherwise I can take it off.

I then asked the $50 million dollar question: can I knit? The doctor said, "Definitely! That's great exercise for your hand!" For the second time, he came very closely to being kissed...I think I love this man.

Knitting with the brace is pretty much impossible as it does not allow my wrist to rotate the right way, but knitting does not seem to place the strain on my wrist that other activities do and I can knit without causing myself any pain whatsoever! I'm taking it easy, mind you. I have no illusions about finishing the blanket by the closing ceremonies, but I can at least knock a few more units out of the way by Sunday night.

I'm back, baby!