My body started talking to me a while back, but I didn't listen. Now it's screaming. Someone took five needles and inserted them lengthwise into each of my wrists.
I go to the doc and he says no, those aren't needles. You have arthritis. I squint at his med school diploma on the wall, because everybody knows arthritis only happens to old people. I can't make it out because my eyes aren't what they used to be.
I ask him what he can do and he says nothing. But the Occupational Therapist will help. The OC gives me ten wrist exercizes, says do 'em twenty times each, six times a day. Some involve squeezing stuff to strengthen the hand, but most demand I bend the wrists.
I could bend the wrist better if you would remove the needles, I say. She says keep bending and the pain won't be as bad. She asks what I do for a living and I explain I deliver 40-pound bottles of water.
To get 'em off the truck, first thing is I slide open a bay door. This isn't bad on the newer trucks, but the trucks aren't all new and on the old ones, the doors get stuck and I have to yank'em up holding the bottom of the door with my fingertips, and other times I just pound around the door with my fists hoping to land a blow at the spot where a bottle slid out of the rack and is jammed against the inside of the door.
Once the door is open, I make a circle with my thumb and index finger and grab the top of a bottle and slide it forward. Then I carry one in each hand to to wherever they go, or put 'em on a cart and push the cart.
How many bottles a day?
Two hundred, give or take.
How long?
Twenty years.
I do some quick math and determine that 40 pounds times 200, times five days a week for twenty years is about five more years of this than the human wrist was designed to handle.
So why does is hurt so bad?
Well, she says, the body has cartilage in between the bones in all the joints, but yours is worn away. The needles you feel are bones touching bones. That's not supposed to happen.
So where to I get more cartilage?
She looks at me funny, not sure if I'm serious.
She says I can strengthen the muscles in the hand and wrist, and this will keep the bones separated. Some of the other exercizes will stretch the tendons.
I do the exercizes for three months, except for one weekend. There was a wedding. Got up early Saturday and drove four hours. Didn't do the exercizes for two days. The needles were back on Monday. Like they were before I saw the doc. It takes a week of bending and stretching to get the pain level down from seven on a scale of one to ten, to three or four. How bad is three or four? Depends on which direction you're headed. From zero, it sucks. From seven, it feels better but you sure know it's there.
I see the doc again and explain. He suggests massive doses of anti-inflammatories. I explain this won't work. Another injury, ten or twelve years ago. Massive doses. (A dose of store-bought is around 200 mg. I took 1100. For weeks.) Now if I take the stuff a couple of days I see blood where you really don't want to see blood.
He suggests cortizone shots. Oh, goody! I like cortizone. It works. Had eight cortizone shots in my heels over the last 18 months. The needle is long, but it doesn't hurt going in. Then he pushes the plunger down and fluid is packed into an area that's already inflamed, and that really hurts. You have to hold real still because this needle is in there and if you move you could mess things up real bad. But in a day or two the thing feels great. Get the needle, doc. Let's do it.
And when can I go back to work?
He looks at me funny, not sure if I'm serious.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
OS Weekend Fiction Club
Keka
Leonde Delmare
L in the Southeast
aliciasaxearts
Bellwether Vance
Salon.com
Comments
NoisyNora--So far. Don't jinx me!
DeliaBlack--Been taking gluco-chondro for years, as should anyone involed in physical labor.
Frank--Smiling, anyway.
alexis--Thank you. Hands are still good for something, I guess.
dustbowldiva--Have done a lot of preventative mainenance stuff to be mostly injury free for most of my career, pilates for the core, yoga to stay limber, sit ups. Never occured to me to worry about my hands.
OEsheepdog--We all have our cross to bear. I just can't lift this one anymore.
Chuck--I think I'll reach a point of manageability with it. As long as I don't do this work anymore. Guys like me bitch about their jobs all day long, but when a doctor says the time has come, we bitch how come you aren't doing anything for me. The guy did do something for me. He told me the truth.
Owl--We had an OS lunch last weekend (I explained about my hands so they didn't mind I just stuck my face in the plate), and decided unanimously you write the coolest comments. Big smoochie from Chicago for you!
Smithery--What do they say about whistling past the graveyard? Thank you.
At Home Pilgrim--and
voicegal--Is this a conspiracy? No I haven't thought of that, but one becomes very open-minded in these situations.
Dolly--Glad you found some relief. I need to write this down. Here, hold this bottle for me, will'ya?
Annimal--Almost anything. We do like our dope in The State's, do we not? Can't seem to perfect the perfect pain med that isn't more addictive than crack. Then they made the one that ended the pain by giving its user a heart attack and killing him. But it's nice to know if I ever get restless leg syndrome, I be able to treat that.
And Iyeeee needles in the heels, youch, I'm feeling the pain as I read it!
Now the horror:
I read a story about a man who had cortisone shots in his elbow joint. It was a long ordeal, maybe 10 years of treatment of this manner but only when it flared up really bad.
Dude has a really bad flare up, goes to doc for the needle, but they can't do it this time. Why? Turns out the bones have eroded or turned to moosh in that area from the shots. Turns out you are not supposed to continue that form of treatment over a long period of time. I am sketchy on the details, it has been a while since I read it. Ain't I a peach? Drop a horror story in your lap and then claim sketchy on details. ;-D
Glad you are feeling more...uh... limber (The Dude/Big Lewbowski)
Hell's Bells--Nothing really heals anymore. Not completely. From here on out, every ding, twist, tear, will be with you for the rest of your days. And there's no longer any such thing as a mild sprain. Aren't I fun to chat with?
Chicago Guy--Physical Therapists just love dancers.
Polly--Ouch, ooch, eech and holy s--- that hurts!
jujujulie--How come every time I say your name, I start singing David Bowie?
Strange fascination, that.
or you can do what my dad did when he was 36 years old and had arthritis in his elbow - find someone with a horse and get some dmso
i'm so sorry. it's odd to think that they have knee and hip replacements for the same types of injuries, but not wrist replacements. Because it sounds like that's what you need. New wrists. It seems so simple: why isn't it?
I'm glad the exercises help, but it seems to me that they should be doing more for you. I wish there were a magic salve for chronic pain. I'd send you some right now.
marcelleqb--Thanks for the tip. A very quick google search turned up reiews saying most of the teachings are very common sense. The major complaint seems to be they take tons of time. This is my compaint as well. I already spend time on my feet and legs, not to mention the midsection, and now walk around squeezing grips all day. I keep a grip ball in my car, which I pull out at red lights, and I drive my wife nuts stretching a gob of putty while we watch tv. Just gotta add the wrists to the list of things requiring extra care. At some point, not falling apart becomes a full-time job.
Kis T. Parker--I've been pretty good at keeping myself in shape for my job for six or seven years, starting with yoga, and on to elliptical trainers and weights. I've about reached the point at which, by the time I'm done training, I'm too tired to work.
Be VERY careful with cortisone, if this doctor hasn't warned you already -- find another doctor NOW! The sad fact is there is no medical procedure that can restore cartilage, tho stem cell research does hold out some hope for the future now that the Luddites have left town.
That doesn't do you any good, I know, and the best you can hope for is to treat the pain. You know without me or the doctor telling you that you're going to have to find another line of work.
Who'd thought cartilage would become such a hot commodity?
Take care of yourself.
I want to tell you that it gets better. But it really doesn't. All the stuff you and I do is palliative. It helps for a while, numbs, deadens, deflects, dulls, the pain, but the source just does not go away. If you have to keep working at that job it will get worse quicker.
Maybe disability is available, but maybe you need to make more than you can get from disability even if they give it to you. It all sucks.
For me the key is to use the pain meds that dull it the most and accept the remaining pain as something that is just part of who I am at this stage in my life. In other words, I own the pain. I do not do that because I like to do it, but because the alternative is feeling sorry for myself, and I do way to much of that already.
Geez, Jim, I do wish you didn't have old Arthur, but he is not easily persuaded to leave once he makes his home with you.
Monte
Just Cathy--The stuff we get used to. Who thought getting a needle jammed in a joint would be welcome. Ask your regular doc to give you a scrip to see a Physical Therapist. They can show you the routines in a visit or two and they can all be done at home. It's hell getting started but it does diminish the pain considerably.
spotted mind--Didn't really intend this to be a pity party. Was more interested in showing how slow some folks can be to accept the obvious. I've made more than a lot of guys performing physical labor for 20 years. My youngest daughter will be off to college next year. We sent two kids to a private schools through sixth grade, had both of 'em in braces at the same time and lived in a nice area with great schools.
I sometimes bitch about property taxes because I own a home, but were it not for the influence of unions in Illinois, I would not have workers comp paying for my treatment and probably a modest settlement when all is said and done. One of my favorite books is The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. The meatpacking plants in Chicago kept a line of job-seekers out front. When someone chopped off a finger, they'd wrap it in a towel and shove the guy out the back door. There are still a lot of jobs in America which treat workers poorly. Mine was not one of them.
I don't take any pills at all, so far, and I'd like to keep it that way as long as I can. Just gotta figure out how to make a living with my head instead of my hands. Self-pity is a luxury some of us can't afford.
All I can say is, for what its worth, you are not alone by any means