Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

X-rayed

2021-04-19T20:28:02Z

I went to Mount Auburn Hospital this afternoon, to have my hands x-rayed--Carmen wants to see how bad the arthritis is, and I think also check whether there's something else going on. I had one hand X-rayed there in 2018, so they will compare the two sets of films.

Now that I'm fully vaccinated and just going places isn't irresponsible, I took a side trip up Mount Auburn Street on the way home. I now have baklava and doner kebab meat from Sevan's bakery, and a few chocolate truffles from Fastachi, a chocolatier I hadn't previously been to. If we like them, I'll go back and maybe try more things.

I looked at the bus times this afternoon, and decided to walk over to the 73, rather than wait 20 minutes for a 71 to go three stops, and then another 15 for the 73. That was a nice bit of wander along streets I hadn't been down before, because there was no specific reason to. But not only can exploring be fun, someone suggested that literal new places will be useful brain exercise after a year of staying home because of the pandemic. That may or may not be true, but I saw various flowers, and one rabbit.

I am getting my teeth cleaned in Watertown Square on Wednesday, and have notes about a bakery to try there, but I forgot about the bakery until just now. We may be over-supplied with sweets.

ETA: Based on what they emailed me, the X-rays show nothing surprising. Left hand is worse than right, and the right hand is doing a bit worse now than three years ago.

I'm expecting an ice cream delivery in fifteen minutes. We will probably be over-supplied with sweets.

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hands

2021-03-11T15:05:10Z

During the night last night, the fingers on both my hands were hurting, and I couldn't make a fist with either. Getting up and running warm water over them helped, enough that I could and did go back to sleep. It's still not great, but I can sort of close both hands, and the pain has receded enough that I forgot to mention it to cattitude until adrian_turtle asked how I was doing.

"Receded" here means stiffness, mostly, which I have sadly gotten used to. Wondering if I should be taking NSAIDs for it more often.

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redbird @ 2020-02-19T22:13:00

2020-02-20T03:20:08Z

today, in brief:

told Matt I'd do some queue copyediting for $47/hour, and he said yes (mostly I proof for them, for a lower rate)
did some proofreading and a little copyediting for queue

cattitude and I

checked out the "Hollingsworth 5 and 10" near Cushing Sq, and bought a replacement tea kettle
tried Aram's Cafe, tiny place on the same block of Trapelo. I had mujadara, because I could--the mujadara itself was heavier than I wanted or expected, but it came with a nice-sized serving of cucumber pieces and yogurt. Not tzatziki, just the plain yogurt and cucumber. Cattitude had an omelette with Armenian sausage; I tasted a piece of sausage and liked it.

Meanwhile, I think the tennis elbow is healing, slowly -- I didn't need any tylenol today -- but I bruised the thumb of the other hand. icing both hands at once is a little odd.

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health: hands again

2020-01-02T14:50:20Z

I am just back from seeing the hand doctor. She diagnosed it as trigger finger again, both hands this time, and did i want both cortisone shots now.

i said yes, despite likely numbness for an hour or so (not bad, if at all, that was 20 minutes ago as i type) and the risk of a pain flare-up from the cortisone. not having had the flare last time, i decided to do it, despite the work deadline saturday night.

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my hand is much better

2019-01-13T02:29:06Z

!markup

The cortisone shot I wrote about Monday (https://redbird.dreamwidth.org/2784278.html) has done my hand a lot of good. By last night, I think it was back to how it had been six months ago, which is far from perfect—I still have arthritis and need to not overuse my hands, and still have difficulty not doing so—but it is a vast improvement, and as much as I was hoping for.

I will probably continue to ice my right hand now and then, because it might help, and go back to only taking naproxen (or other NSAIDs) when I feel a specific need (including for my knee or hips), rather than 200 mg twice a day, whether I have a specific reason to or not.

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I saw the hand doctor

2019-01-07T19:55:58Z

I think/hope this will work. ( cut for discussion of hand problems )

If this works, I may start feeling better in a couple of days, or it might take a couple of weeks. If I don't notice any effect in a couple of weeks, I can call the hand doctor again and/or call the occupational therapist and get an orthotic made. I asked for, and got, a prescription for the orthotic, so I won't have to go back to Dr. Green if the cortisone doesn't do the job. In the meantime, I should keep icing, and avoid "heavy" gripping with that hand.

The doctor said that if this works, it may solve this problem for good, or I might need another cortisone injection some months or years from now. That's a time-scale I can accept.

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spotify

2018-11-30T00:52:40Z

cattitude suggested that listening to audiobooks, podcasts, or music might be easier on my hands than the various things I've been doing (reading online or on the kindle, some typing), and has added me to his paid spotify account. (Most of our recorded music is in a box somewhere.)

I'm currently listening to the new VNV Nation album, Noire, which drwex mentioned yesterday. Podcasts and such will probably work better for keeping enough of my attention/focus that I don't do much with my hands, but I'm not comfortable using headphones for long at a time, and don't want to distract Cattitude too much. So, music now, maybe talk when he's at the library tomorrow.

I don't have a diagnosis for the pain in my right hand beyond having been told that it's inflamed, and to take NSAIDs, use heat, rest my hand but do use it a little, and come back if it's not better in a couple of weeks. It has been almost two weeks, but I'm not doing well at the resting part. I do have arthritis in my hands, but this is significantly worse than I'd gotten, unhappily, used to. Since I've been assured that this isn't neurological, I may not follow up for a bit; I already have an MRI next week and then am seeing my neurologist the week after, as ongoing care, and when I talk to the eye doctor's surgical coordinator I think that's going to involve making at least one pre-surgical appointment with him.

( backstory" )

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Work

2017-11-29T01:36:04Z

I just finished a copyedit for a new freelance client: they wanted someone who was comfortable with math, but didn't want me editing the math (good), beyond looking at end-of-line punctuation for display equations. So, at about 2:30 this afternoon I sent them the edited book, my invoice, and a cover letter.

The message bounced. First Panix said that was too large an outgoing message for their mail system. Then I tried gmail, which got me a bounce message from the client's mail system. So I sent another email, saying that the project is done but their mail system bounced it, and how do they handle receiving large files (likely dropbox, but I'm waiting to hear back). The odd thing is that their system will send messages that big.

This was a flat-rate job, for which the client offered $400. I looked at the manuscript and said I'd do it for $475, which they accepted. I didn't track hours on this one, but I think my price quote was reasonable from that angle. What I didn't take into account was that editing on PDFs (by writing comments) is physically harder for me than in Word. That doesn't mean I should charge more, so much as think more carefully about whether to take on such projects at all.

Meanwhile, my contact at ACM sent me the first few smaller files from that bimonthly batch about an hour before I finished working on this book. PDFs again, so I may not even look at them until Thursday.

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tendonitis update: healing

2017-08-17T02:19:26Z

The thumb is definitely doing better. Today I tried taking the brace off when I wanted to do something that would work better with two hands/both thumbs (like opening a pill bottle and eating lunch and supper), but keeping it on most of the time, and it seems to be working. I also did one of my PT-ish exercises with weight in that hand for the first time in a few weeks (I'd been doing it with just the weight of the brace on that arm, and my usual low weight in the left hand), and that also seems to be fine.

My current plan is to do this for at least a few days, and I will be sleeping with the hand in the brace for weeks if not months longer, but I suspect I don't need to go back to the doctor at the end of this month.

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PT session

2015-07-02T21:52:13Z

This was the first PT in a bit over two weeks (because I was on vacation, and then I postponed what would have been Tuesday's session to give the ankle a bit of time to rest/recover).

( mostly for my records )

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gym (yesterday)

2011-11-19T03:29:34Z

A workout with Emilie, as best as I can remember:
( Read more... )

On an unrelated positive note, I noticed on the way home this evening that the tips of my left thumb and index finger were tingling: and realized that this was the first time in a couple of days. So that's good.

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Farthing Party, etc.

2011-09-26T23:44:58Z

I'm just back from Farthing Party, papersky's small science fiction convention/large party in Montreal. cattitude and I had a wonderful time, and I think julian_tiger is in the process of forgiving us.

( long con/travel write-up, in no particular order )

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gym

2011-09-13T02:11:56Z

I was going to title this "gym, with some care," but while I possibly should have been careful of my hands and arms, I wasn't particularly. They seem to have come through the workout okay, though, which is reassuring after a few days in which many things that are supposed to be good for the hands seemed to be making them worse.

(On the other hand, there's some pain as I'm typing the details below the cut.)

( details cut as usual, slightly different from what I've been doing )

Also, when I got my hot chocolate afterwards, the barista commented that I was always smiling when they saw me; I said it was because I come there from the gym, so I've been doing something fun, I'm not coming directly from work. Then I thought about what I'd said.

On the way home from the subway, I got a long look at a skunk, first standing next to the water fountain, then it went into the ballfield and walked sort of parallel to me on the other side of the fence. I walked slowly, and stood and watched it for a moment, then decided it would be more prudent to go on, and not make it nervous. Not nearly as cute as the mustelids we saw yesterday, small-clawed otters at the Bronx Zoo.

When a rodent crossed my path a block and a half later, I thought "okay, just a rat," and then contemplated whether it was too large for the skunk to kill and eat; they're predators, but small.

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Exercise, arms, etc.

2011-07-02T00:11:31Z

Good cardio, and about 2/3 of a very up session with Emilie, then I felt the energy drop and we did the rest more slowly and carefully.

( details )

My hands are not as happy. I saw my GP on Tuesday to check into a mix of left hand issues (notably waking with the hand stiff and hurting many mornings) and one episode of forearm pain on the same side. The doctor thinks it may be tendonitis, and said to buy a brace to wear at night and take moderately large doses of anti-inflammatories. I was worried I'd have trouble falling asleep with the brace on; that hasn't happened. Wednesday morning I woke up and the hand didn't hurt, which was encouraging, but yesterday and this morning it did. However, the instructions are to do this for 7-14 days, and if it isn't better, the next step is a nerve conduction study to try to identify where the problem is. Based on my descriptions of the problems, she said it could be either of at least two, maybe three. So, brace at night, and 375 mg of naproxen twice a day (a normal over-the-counter pill is 200 mg, and the OTC packaging says take one or two but no more than a total of three in 24 hours). And then I think I overused it at work this afternoon. I'm hoping the long weekend, and my planned trip to Montreal, will help me to not spend too much time at the keyboard (this doesn't mean not chatting with people, it means not refreshing DW/LJ over and over, or spending lots of time doing Sudoku puzzles). The closest I have to weekend plans involve time in Inwood Hill Park, and maybe some dim sum if I don't sleep too late on Sunday.

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