“So when do you experience the most pain?” The Doc asked.

“Well, When I write, type, lift weights, pushups, juggle tangerines, pickup kiddos, tie shoes, garden, 'flick the bean' if you know what I'm saying, pretty much anything that involves my wrist, and then it goes numb.” I responded.

“Oh, I see. Well, there is only one thing that I can tell you.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Stop it.”

Stop it. I don't think I have ever plunked down money for such an astute diagnosis. No pills, no hanging upside down for an hour, no taking B vitamins or working it out emotionally. Stop it. Yeah right.

As if I was saying it aloud, my Doctor turned to me with her 'come to Jesus' eyes and said. "If you don't you could have permanent nerve damage, that even surgery couldn't fully help."

Oh snap.

"How long do I have to stop?"

"At least two weeks. Don't even think about lifting weights or raking leaves or mopping or anything like that. No typing. No more writing. Get a tape recorder if you have to. But knock it all off. Carpal tunnel is something you must learn to live with and work through, but first you have to lay off the things that agitate your nerves. "The Doc pressed.

They look like good strong hands, don't they? I thought driving home with my cramped up little fists of pain on the steering wheel. I felt like the giant rock biter from the ‘Never Ending Story‘. So powerful and strong, yet painfully vulnerable. For the next two weeks I was going to have to let them all slip through my fingers, even the racing snail.

I'm not a single mother, though I play one nine months out of the year, while my husband grunts and snorts and does salty sea dog stuff out on the briny blue. And for the next two months I will be playing the roll. Except this time, the roll of single mom will be played by this winy woman fumbling at the mountain of tasks that won't get done. Kiddos will still need to go to school and have food made etc. etc., but it was going to be a whole new experience. "Hey kids! Let's pretend mommy had her arms cut off, and you can do all of the work! Doesn't that sound exciting?" My daughter mumbled under her breath that I was crazy and histrionic. I gave her a dollar for the word usage. My son looked up at me through his dirt exterior and said, "I gotta poop"

The carpal tunnel is mostly in my left hand. My 'me time' hand. I go everywhere with it and it opens doors for me and starts conversations for me when I write in front of people with it. I learned to use chopsticks when I was 16 in Hong Kong and there were three waitresses standing behind me laughing. Apparently, it is not very common to use your left hand to eat with. I think it's part of the untouchable caste of the anatomy. Anyhow, they were fully entertained for the evening, sniggering and mimicking. I didn't quite learn to use chopsticks that night, but I really learned how to accidentally flick pieces of octopi and gawking bystanders quite well. I was given a gentle speech on etiquette after that one.

I never truly appreciated all that my trusty left did. She's amazing. Or, was until she went on the DL. Now she just hobbles around looking ridiculous in her, "I'm a dork" brace and fumbling for keys and holding a piece of toast. But on the plus side, I'm getting to know her inbred brother of an appendage, right hand. Right hand has an IQ of around 78. There are wrenches and screwdrivers with higher intelligence. It's like right hand is constantly stoned and really doesn't care about getting anything right, my apologies for the pun. For a while as a college dropout I would go to job interviews high as a kite, so they wouldn't expect any more from me. I guess you could say that in a former life, I had been my right hand.

But now I'm vital and required to fulfill contractual obligations and I have to use right hand. Groan. The learning curve is pretty damn low after we entered her scores in there, let me tell you. And then I find that I begin having much more numb brained moments. I am the right hand.

Alright, I should probably interject a small disclaimer right here and now, before I am met with violent opposition; being right handed does NOT make you dumb. Unless that is, you use it like a one year old like me.

But it has offered a bit of introspective time that I previously hadn't had. If you think about it rationally, and if you have ever read Louise L. Hay, most of our ailments are psychosomatic and are a physical manifestation that projects a metaphor for your current situation and any problems you may face.

And there it was. Bingo. I am a left handed woman living in a right handed world. Okay, well, if you look at where I live, we can use a more colorful metaphor. I'm a left winged woman living in a right winged area. Maybe I'm trying so hard to be a good left wing radical that I'm injuring myself and not allowing my self to embrace the right winged society for all of its reasonably good intentions. Maybe if I bought a Palin t-shirt (they are really cheap now) the pain would just float away like a pixie or a fairy or some mythical ideal...

Not worth it. I can handle a little uncomfortable physiological reconfiguration, and my right needs the dexterity.

This lil' situation has come with years of strenuous occupations. The years of java jerking, beer slinging, waitressing and stint as a groupie of a band with a whiskey dick problem have taken their toll. So I have begun to adopt a new lifestyle. I now accessorize with dorky braces at all times.

It's getting better now, and I am beginning to get a little better at all things with my right hand as well as gaining strength in my left. 'Double clicking the mouse'-ahem, is still up to the stranger, but she's moved up from, ignorant first time masturbator to drunk husband.

I'm writing a little more everyday, but still a little gimpy. For a while I thought I would be composing small stories with a pencil in my teeth. But at least it's better than Jean-Dominique Bauby, author of 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’, who communicated the entire text by blinking with one eye. Someone once told me that Ernest Hemingway only wrote 100 words a day when writing 'The Old Man and the Sea'. Maybe if he would have known that a man was writing his soul with a bat of an eyelash he would have written a little more with his capable digits. Maybe not. Artist Charles Movalli was talking to my father once about a painting he had just finished. "It's not the way I really wanted it," he frowned, "but I just didn't have time to make it simple."

Maybe this will allow me to think about content and not rattle on, but to keep it simple.Hopefully.

The two weeks have past and I'm now capable and ready to take on the challenge of the blog. I'm feeling a little rusty, so be patient until I get my writing muscle back in shape.