Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Taking another break from emptying buckets and driving myself crazy with worry ... I promised y'all more info on the wrist situation.

My two biggest fears regarding my wrist -- a fracture (since a fracture that keeps not healing is a sign of badness) and arthritis -- have been put to rest. The x-ray images are clean: healthy bones, nothing to see here, move along. The problem is with the tendons. The doctor's proposed plan, subject to approval from the finance department (since I can't afford to pay full price and none of this is covered by the state plan) is to start me on an NSAID to get the inflammation down and give things a chance to heal themselves, aided by cortosone delivered via phonopheresis (which is administered by a physical therapist, which is the referral that needs approval from on high), and if that doesn't work then a more aggressive approach in a month. He started out suggesting a cortizone injection. I mentioned that I'd had a very bad reaction to a cortisone injection ten or so years ago. He said that reacting badly to the cortizone itself was unlikely, and that I had probably reacted to one or more other chemicals (preservatives and whatnot) in the solution alongside the cortizone, but he did at that point switch to wanting to use phonopheresis because it's even less likely to generate a bad reaction, and we'll try injection if this doesn't work.

I can continue playing guitar in the meantime, but I am to ice the wrist a whole lot every day. (Argh. Already feeling cold too much of the time, y'know?) And especially ice it before performing (which I'd already been doing). He and I seem to see eye to eye regarding playing the long game here, with full recovery and long-term health being far more important than a quick fix. His comments on that score referring to my being musician gave me the idea that he really understands the ramifications of a patient being a musician. Not all doctors get it.

When I asked whether I could play tomorrow, he said, "What difference does it make? You're going to play whether I say it's all right or not." (Okay, he gets that aspect of musicians, too ...)

I replied, "I'm concerned enough about the long term, that I'll miss a few gigs if I need to to get better." Then he said that I should be okay tomorrow as long as I ice the wrist well.

I like this doctor so far. He was pretty patient in explaining things to me, answered all my questions, explained his reasoning, not just his conclusions, and said some of the same things about the state of the US health care system/industry and the nature of corporations that I have said.

So I need to fill this prescription (and refill a bunch of others while I'm at it) once I have enough cash on hand, and wait for someone to call me to say whether I'll be getting the phonophersis treatments.

The problem with the x-ray CD was probably that my Windows XP installation is screwed up somehow, preventing the program on the CD from loading or installing correctly. It worked on the orthopedist's computer. (I'm still confused about my inability to read the files with other tools; the description of DICOM made it sound like it was supposed to be a universally-readable format rather than each vendor's files needing their own tools ... but maybe I've got some more subtle problem going on with my computers.) Anyhow, he was quite happy to show me what he'd been looking at, where he looked for signs that would have cast doubt on his initial diagnosis and such -- instead of just saying, "your x-rays are clean, there's nothing to see there," he said, "would you like to have a look?" and led me from the examination room to his office to show me.

Now if only I could've gotten to this point a bit earlier instead of six or seven months after the problem started! (I did, of course, Google deQuervain's tenosynovitis after I got a break from flinging buckets of water out the window and improvising a raincoat for two servers downstairs. I'm wondering what counts as 'early' in the line on the Mayo Clinic web site that says, "If started early on, treatment for de Quervain's tenosynovitis is generally successful.".

Perhaps my experience here isn't an adequate response to anti-universal-health-care folks who intone that universal care "will mean long waits for treatment", since I am, after all, already on a state-run plan. But I had longer waits for treatment than my Canadian friends even when I was with regular HMOs that employers paid for. Seven months is a long time to spend wondering whether a treatable injury is turning into something permanent from lack of treatment. I'm relieved to hear today that I should get completely better, but would I have had to wait so long to find out if I were in Canada?

Okay, now to see whether I have anything I can use to make a siphon to get water flowing out the window. I feel like I'm "running out of cope" -- I keep feeling as though it's hours later in the day than it is (woke up way early for me, after far too little sleep, on a grey day that's messing with my sense of time anyhow); I'm tired, I really want to go to sleep, every time I think the rain is tapering off it starts up again, and every time I start to do something else the sound changes and I discover water showing up in a new place when I investigate. I keep getting dripped on, and since it's rain, the drippimg water is cold. So I'm cold, wet, tired, frazzled, and not sure when I'll get to stop moving; my wrist hurts, as do my back and both shoulders. It's kind of like the fifth day of a six-day rainstorm in a leaky tent at Pennsic.

*sigh* But I guess Pennsic at least counts as a sort of training for adventures like today's, eh?