an update, for my mom, because this is how she finds out how I'm doing

I trudged, on my very first day in Germany, fresh off the plane, to Cos, where I bought the best mittens in the world. I have smallish hands but only the large size ones would fit over my left hand. Now I eagerly await the cold weather.
It was a long walk to Cos and I got a little lost/have no German/didn't want to use roaming on my phone. But, with the help of some strangers, I found my way.






An Der Messe was my hotel, Cantina Divino is the most wonderful restaurant, Klein___ over on the right side of the map is the Kleinmarkthalle where I go to pick up meats and cheeses and, so, my point here is that while I busted my butt to find Cos and get there right away on Monday, exhausted after my flight, it turns out that I was always within walking distance of those mittens and could have bought them any time. Except they were the only ones in the store.

I've had a long week and have fallen asleep at 8:00 or 8:30 each night. I could not keep my eyes open.
I've been to PT where they got a nice cracking noise out of my wrist (which is a good thing) and to the pain management doctor who agreed that the super-high-tech compound cream he had sent to me is worthless. He slipped me three boxes of the amazing prescription pain patches that my insurance doesn't cover ($380!) and explained carefully that what I am interpreting as pain is not pain. (Bear with me here.) Because the nerves in my hand and wrist have been so seriously damaged and are now healing, because my injury was significant, my brain interprets most of what I am feeling as pain when, in fact, most of what I am feeling is tingling, hypersensitivity, the strangeness of nerve re-growth and he did some simple exercises/tests with me to prove his point. He is correct and this means the end of my wearing a sock on my hand as we have a very small window of opportunity to re-train my brain to interpret what my hand is feeling as NOT PAIN, because if we don't do this right now, if we don't let my hand feel all the feelings, my brain will always tell me that my hand hurts. I don't plan on letting that happen. All socks are now for feet only.




It's looking pretty good and I'm about 60% recovered. I am continuing to work very hard.
VERY HARD.
I stress this because the pain doctor and the surgeon seem to think I might stop working very hard. They remind me all the time that my hand and wrist were seriously injured and will need lots of hard work. This mystifies me a little as I have done nothing but reassure them of the seriousness of my dedication.
I WILL SEE THIS THROUGH.
I wrote a little this past week...I cannot make a fork get to my mouth.
But here - here is a PT-related funny(ish) story for you.

There is a fellow at the hand table, a big fellow, who is kind of loud and funny and very New York City. He had the most horrific wound on his hand. His palm and fingers had been sliced by a very large knife and you don't need the details but no one involved in this gruesome injury was sober and he got excellent emergency treatment and highly skilled surgery and is recovering well.
When I met him, a month ago, I could not look at his hand. I've turned into a fainter and I just couldn't look at it - the wound was too awful.
He sat down next to me on Tuesday and was in very good spirits. I glanced quickly and noticed that his hand looks amazing - almost as though it was never hurt. He did his exercises and told me they almost couldn't save his ring finger, I did mine and he asked what had happened to me. I told him and he asked to see my wrist:

Guy at at Hand Table With Formerly Unbelievably Horrific Looking Hand: would you mind showing me how they repaired your wrist and hand?

me: sure, this is where the doctor cleaned up my fractures and secured my radius with a plate and screws and this is where he worked on the nerves that had been damaged in my hand.


Guy at at Hand Table With Formerly Unbelievably Horrific Looking Hand: what's that scar over there?

me: I sort of had a compound fracture there - a bone was kind of sticking up a lot and didn't quite break through but sort of did...


Guy at at Hand Table With Formerly Unbelievably Horrific Looking Hand: WHAT?! GOD! DON'T SHOW ME THAT! GOD, I CAN'T LOOK AT THAT, THAT'S AWFUL. GOD, I COULD PASS OUT LOOKING AT SOMETHING LIKE THAT...I GOTTA LOOK AWAY, SORRY!

Life is funny, isn't it?