November 5, 1998

My hands hurt so terribly last night that I had to wake up several times and take ibuprofen and drink some water, and even wake Scott with my cries of pain, so he could massage my shoulders. This sucks. I thought that my hand and arm problems would go away (read: carpal tunnel, or Repetitive Stress Syndrome), but it has flared up again after not being careful at my job.

My shoulders and forearms feel bulky, like I've been doing some heavy lifting. And I think I am PMS'ing, too. That may have a whole heck of a lot to do with it. Which doesn't make me feel any better, I suppose, but what's a girl to do? Things could be worse. Yes. This is the philosophy I must go with. Things could be worse.

This really gets me down, this problem with my hands. And it also gets me down that my job is what got me so debilitated with pain, and that they've been largely unsuccessful in helping me solve this problem and cure my hands, and/or make me feel better by giving me different responsibilities. Most of this comes from working on an espresso bar for several hours at a stretch. I won't go into it, because it literally bores me to tears, but suffice it to say that it's a very depressing injury.

I love using my hands. I hate having to pick something up, or maybe just open a jar, and feel twinges of fake electricity run through my fingers, or a slice of crimson-hot pain slice up my arm. I used to give massages, neck rubs. Oh, you'll love this. When I was a kid my mother used to get migraines all the time, and since there was little in terms of medicine to help her at the time, she'd pay me a quarter for every fifteen minutes I'd rub her neck and back. And it taught me patience, because I'd often go a lot longer than my fingers wanted to -- because my mother was in so much pain.

I also love to draw, and to sculp a little. I love to touch. I love to be able to feel the temperatures of surfaces, to make the perfect snowball. And here I was, this morning, trying to slap at an alarm clock my brain told me might as well not even be there, for all I was able to pick up with the nerves in my fingers. Very alarming. And the loss of sleep. Oh, how terrible. I hate the feeling of limbs leaden with inthemiddleofthemorning thrashes and tosses and turnings...

The anger also comes back. It puts me in a foul mood, this thing with my hands. It makes me want to gnash my teeth, and it makes me sweetly cranky. "If you're nice to me, I might gift you with not snapping at you. Come a little closer, and make sure you give me chocolate, or your life is in peril."

The pain is too much, and I think I need to go sleep some more. Tomorrow brings another day.