I wept tonight. I nearly wept myself into a panic attack. My guts are still fluttering. And I flung things down the stairs.
But that’s the end of the story. Let’s start at the beginning.
On Monday night, after the teenager’s car accident, I went to Apex Training for my 100th session at the gym since I started about ten months ago.
Because it was my 100th session, the my trainer picked out 6 exercises for me to do 100 times, at my own pace, breaking them into sets as I saw fit.
I was a little stiff the next day, which was yesterday, but I still managed to do 100% according to the metrics at work. But my the end of the day my right leg was unsteady.
Today I woke up very stiff, with my muscles in my lower body so tight I struggled to bend and I had even less control and stability in my right leg.
I only made about 90% today.
By the end of the day, my right quad had this dull burn to it, but it didn’t really hurt. But it was getting more and more difficult to control as my stiffness dissipated.
But the teenager and I still made it to my 101st session at Apex and celebrated by trying the new strawberry Frosty at Wendy’s. Which, by the way, is much tastier with a Wendy’s sugar cookie.
I took my custom splint off— today marks one week of wearing it and taking it off every 3 hours for occupational therapy exercises and when needed “for hygiene.” And the finger is looking steady!
I removed the splint to wipe down my hand with a wet nap before eating. I set it down carefully in my lap. And then it just disappeared. I checked the take-out bag. I checked my bra, the car compartments, the seat.
The teenager told me to stop wiggling around that it had to be in the car and we’d look at home.
We didn’t find it at home.
So I went to the kitchen and started to cry. my finger had looked so good wrapped around that Frosty cup as I smeared the Frosty on my portion of the cookie the teenager and I shared.
I checked my local CVS’s website: no splint in stock. So I checked my local Walgreen’s: no splint in stock. And so it went.
Still upset, I found a piece of wood my cockatoo had stripped from her toy and taped it to my finger.
My splint. Hopefully I’ll find a better solution in the morning.
Yesterday was my first day working with a custom splint on my mallet finger instead of a cast. And it went really well— except for the times I put my splint back on the outside of my hand instead of the inside. And I went to apply fresh tape and the nurse at work wanted to help.
All-in-all, I achieved a new record (for me) in Freestyle, shipping I believe 574 items or 115% of the 500 item goal for a 10-hour shift. And that includes 15 minutes I spent trying to find a work station that was operational. If you subtract that as official “non-production time” it might be damn close to 116%.
Today, a Monday, with the traditional Monday through Friday people at work, I was assigned to a different table in QC, my regular department. It was a table just a smidgeon higher than the table I worked at last week and the line was on the left instead of the right.
This is the first time since my return-to-work in late May that I have worked on the left. In one way, it’s nice because I have been having issues with the stability of my walk and control in my right leg, so working on the left means I can use my left side more.
But working on the left side means I’m shoving all those boxes with my injured hand and after two hours the cuticle area under my nail on my injured finger is tender and really red. Despite this, at one point this morning, I reached 118%.
But then I got a call from The Teenager. She rear-ended someone in her father’s 2022 Kia SUV. The car he bought after he rear-ended someone in late December and totaled his beloved 2016 Nissan Juke.
She’s fine. It was raining and she misjudged how long it would take her to stop in the wet. The car looked driveable, but when she tried it started leaking fluid and overheating. So, she called AAA to tow it.
I left work early. At four hours into my shift, I think I had QCed 69 fixes, and goal for that specific time of day is 65. That’s with going out to my car to get info for my daughter, calling her father, and similar nonsense.
I was listening to an episode of business wars, the podcast, or was it The History Channel’s The Food that Built America and the history of Burger King vs. McDonald’s and the invention of the Chicken McNugget.
Now I distinctly remember the debut of the Chicken McNugget, which, according to the podcast, became available at all McDonalds in 1983.
I was eight. Probably riding around with my mom in her 1979 Camaro (black). We lived in a very rural area in Pennsylvania’s Slate Belt. The closest actual town was Portland, Pa., which I feature in my first novel, Manipulations (and if you are interested you can buy it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com, or at Bookshop.org here — the Bookshop price includes shipping and designates a portion of the profit to an independent bookseller of your choice).
Anyway, we had a very small supermarket in Portland so my mom would do most of her family shopping in Stroudsburg, Pa., the gateway to the Pocono Mountains. If she were shopping at Kmart for clothes or household items or at Shoprite for our groceries, we would often stop at Burger King where the delight would be a cheeseburger and some onion rings.
But if we had to go to the Stroud Mall, McDonald’s was across the street. So we want to McDonald’s. I didn’t like McDonald’s — they put onions on their burgers and I don’t like onions. So, eight-year-old me was very excited for these Chicken McNuggets. If my mom was in a good mood, I could order a Chicken McNugget Happy Meal. Which— in the eighties— came with six nuggets in a styrofoam container. And of course, I only liked the barbecue sauce.
So the podcast got me thinking about McDonald’s in general especially since I worked at a McDonald’s (a very busy McDonald’s) from the summer I graduated high school until the August after I graduated college.
We made $5.25/hour in the late 1990s. A full-time employee made $200/week. And we got one meal per shift. I ate a lot of McChicken sandwiches.
I’m thinking about McDonald’s and listening to Conan O’Brian and Andrew Gurza (not together although that would be amazing), when I get the phone call with the teenager in tears.
“Mom, I rear-ended someone in Dad’s new car.”
This was her first car accident. It’s a rainy day here and she misjudged how far she needed to stop. And she didn’t want to slam on her brakes harder and lose control of the car.
At first, she and the police officer who responded thought the car was driveable. It started leaking what looked like antifreeze and overheated. So the officer called AAA.
I told my Stitch Fix supervisors the situation and asked to leave.
The teenager told me she was on a side street “out by Target” “by the library” and I misinterpreted her and went to the wrong town.
The teenager texted me a photo of the nearest intersection and I realized my mistake and turned around.
A very kind officer waited with her and I drove her to the dog walking client she had been driving to when the accident happened.
And then I grabbed us lunch at McDonald’s because their triple cheeseburger is my favorite sandwich on the menu and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
I listen to a lot of podcasts at work and one of them is “Why are people watching this?” This weekly podcast takes the top rated show on Netflix for any given week and reviews it among a group of friends.
They recently looked at Season Four of Stranger Things. Now, I first “tried” Stranger Things and couldn’t get into it. But I decided to try again, based on some comments made in that episode.
They reference how well the show captures 1980s nostalgia and comments on the good casting and talent of the young actors.
I am now starting the current season— and I’m curious where it will go because Season Three ended at a perfect point. So I think it will be hard to maintain the arc.
The series plays out like a comic book, often poignant, then funny, then over-the-top. It’s part teen drama, part horror, part sci-fi and in all honesty, the sci-fi/conspiracy horror/monster storylines don’t impress me. And the plot line of a government agency raising children with superpowers still feels like a rip-off of DarkAngel. Personally, the early episodes of Dark Angel captivate me and I love Jessica Alba in her lead role in that series. Just don’t watch the final season, it’s some of the worst television I’ve ever seen.
But anyway, the characters on Stranger Things keep me coming back. They are so interesting. And the essence of the eighties oozes out the pores. Their season three depiction of The Mall scene captured every detail— even the old branding of all the main icons of that era: Burger King, Orange Julius, the Gap.
It’s like the Buffy The Vampire Slayer of sci-fi/dark fantasy.
So I’m curious to see if Season Four will hold up.
I spent 15 years of my working life as a print journalist and often I still look at the world stifling my opinions in order to present fairness, equity and facts.
It’s not dissimilar to what some of my small, family-oriented business owning friends say: that you don’t want to alienate those who trust you.
But I grow more and more disheartened by our country every day. With the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade 6 to 3, abortion will be legislated by the States.
“Conservatives” (I say that because America has a long history of not really using the terms conservative and liberal correctly) and pro-Lifers will rejoice. But I am agitated at the illogical rhetoric that our country throws out there when we, as a society, need to tackle important issues. And both sides seem ridiculously unwilling to compromise in any way. Cooperation is a dirty word to our leaders.
All of this is my opinion and here are my lamentations:
The logic of changing (and probably eliminating) the right to abortion is usually centered on protecting the unborn. Who is clamoring to take care of all of these unborn? What if the fetus has serious complications? What if the parents are severely impoverished or facing homelessness or addiction? What if the parents are unstable emotionally? We are a society that traditionally does not have the kindest or most efficient or even equitable healthcare, foster care or support for the disabled.
So, when we start talking about abortion, it’s an issue of individual rights, isn’t it? And a couple years ago when we started talking about a public health crisis— the pandemic— a lot of people who are probably very keen on pro-life sentiments also balked about the prospect of wearing a mask or mandating mRNA vaccines. Now I still don’t like mRNA technology but I understand my responsibility as the member of society and the philosophical concept of the greater good, so I got the damn “vaccine.” But the same people who say it’s a violation of personal rights and bodily autonomy to wear a mask or force a needle often think it’s perfectly okay to interfere with a woman’s bodily autonomy and health when it comes to abortion— and these same people have no concern or interest about what happens to the woman during pregnancy or to the baby upon birth.
This baby, this unborn life, is protected but we live in a land where guns are easily available and shootings are becoming as commonplace as Starbucks. Children can find guns and shoot other children. Teachers die in mass shooters in classrooms. Worshipping people die in churches but we value the sanctity of unborn life. To have a gun is a second amendment right. So protecting life against guns cannot by done, or so they say.
The big problem in this country stems from ignorance and poverty. Corporations and politicians, run by those who have financial assets, decide who has opportunity and education. Schools are woefully unequal even a mere mile apart. So while we are taught to work hard and we might achieve anything, it’s just not true.
Today is the teenager’s 18th birthday — she has a lot of dog walking clients so we stopped at her favorite gas station, the Penn Jersey mini mart, and I grabbed candy and sodas.
I meant to grab two “2 for $1.50” candies and “2 for $3.50” 20 ounce Coke products.
Instead, I grabbed one “2 for $1.50” candy and one “2 for $2” candy.
They didn’t have plain old Coke Zero— or perhaps I’m not used to looking for the new packaging— so I got “space tasting” Coke Zero Starlight and a Diet Coke for the birthday girl.
As for candy, I bought melon rings and colorful juju fish.
The teenager declared the red juju fish the best and the yellow, “nasty.”
Meanwhile, if I had to make what space tastes like according to Coke Zero, I would say cotton candy melted into their cola formula.
The teenager and I traded sodas.
Yesterday, my mother-in-law brought down a birthday cake for the teenager, a baked Alaska decorated like an igloo. The dessert featured layers of cake and ice cream sandwiching a strawberry filling like a big old Kaiser roll, but the Kaiser roll was meringue caramelized in the oven.
Speaking of rolls, I stopped at the little convenience store in my neighborhood— the one with the Latin vibe— and picked out these sweet rolls for a toasted treat. This morning I sliced one very thin and slathered it with key lime curd.
And for her birthday dinner, the teenager wanted to invite her father to Jasmine Sushi and Thai, where they always do such a magnificent job on presentation. My estranged husband had never had sushi in a restaurant before, so this was very fun.
We got the love boat for 2, which includes the Dragon and California rolls, the Hot Girl Roll, the Butterfly Roll, the eel and cucumber roll and the dynamite roll. These featured crab, scallops, salmon and tuna. Some spicy, some fruity, some crunchy.
We spent $175 for dinner once we got beverages and dessert and left a nice tip, but the teenager is our only baby and she’s 18 now.
So, as directed by my doctor, I went to see my friends — the occupational therapists at the Institute for Hand and Upper Extremity Rehabilitation.
They fitted me with a custom splint molded to my finger (for $50) that despite my doctor’s recommendation that I wear the splint at night only, they want me to wear the splint 24-hours a day for the next week, which for me will be nine days because that’s the day I can get there again.
I am to remove this splint when I bathe, when I wash my hands, and five times a day to do physical therapy exercises.
The exercises are 10 reps of basic hand gestures: straightening the hand, lightly bending the top of the hand, and making a loose fist.
If the hand loses progress instead of gains it, then the cast will be reapplied.
In pondering this, I realize several opinions of mine that may be greater truths:
Had I accepted my doctor’s solution of “cheaping out” and reusing my stinky cast as a splint, my recovery from this mallet finger would be more direct versus gradual. I believe gradual, supervised steps toward healing are better and I wonder if there are statistics about patients and the long-term success rates with these injuries with various treatments. How many patients would hear that insurance won’t cover it and end the conversation there without considering that the $50 might provide more than just a splint, but also guidance and expertise.
Are my occupational therapists just over-cautious or it is a case (as I think it is) that the therapists see more of this injury and in the same manner than nurses often know more than doctors, do occupational therapists understand more about function than fancy specialized surgeons?
I was very apprehensive and so excited to see my doctor at OAA today to get my damn cast off for an evaluation of my mallet finger.
The teenager texted me as I sat in the exam room.
“Free the finger!”
They had a devil of a time cutting it off— apparently after even five weeks in the same cast it was firmly on.
Both the hand/orthopedic specialist and the hand rehab office it’s unusual for patients to maintain a finger cast for so long. That doesn’t make sense to me, because why wouldn’t you do everything in your power to maintain agility and strength in yourfinger?
Free the Finger!
the Teenager
And don’t give me that “it’s too hard” or “I need my hand to do stuff.”
I work in the Stitch Fix Bizzy Hizzy warehouse folding clothes. And after my brief stint on short term disability to deal with my balance and hip issues stemming from cerebral palsy (and made more complicated by now not being able to rely on the left side of my body with this temporary injury), I went back to work and performed at 100% and higher with my finger in a cast and restricted hand movement.
That finger had so much caked dead skin and here’s the really fascinating part— my knuckle no longer has wrinkles because it has not bent.
In the beginning of my treatment, I found my doctor cold and impersonal but as he gets to know me I like him more and I get more personable interactions from him.
He told me I should gradually increase my finger flexibility with care not to hyperextend it (otherwise known as don’t bend it backwards) and splint it at night. For the splint, I could take my cast back. And tape it in at night.
“It’s cheap, but it’s dirty,” the doctor said.
Yeah, no thanks. I lived with that grimy thing long enough.
“The other option is to return to the Hand Institute and they’ll make you a splint.”
(Which, coincidentally Cigna, my insurance, does not cover. But as I do not cheap out on my medical care, I will pay for. Because right now my HSA is empty because having a disability and doing everything you can to keep yourself ahead of that disability is expensive. So please, consider this and how lucky I am that I can support myself because if I had to really on family and government benefits to subsidize my care, I’d be crippled.)
I imagine there’s a third option— buy an over-the-counter splint. And I was going to consider that. But to me, the cost of the custom splint comes with the knowledge and enthusiasm of the people at the Institute for Hand and Upper Extremity Rehabilitation. These people love and know hands.
And if I can only teach others one concept about your health, it is this: invest in yourself, meaning, find the right medical providers for your team that understand your needs and share your personal philosophy and concerns. This requires being vulnerable in a way that might be uncomfortable and it might mean having difficult conversations with people you don’t like. But it may also lead you to better understanding of yourself and of those people who seemed like callous know-it-alls disinterested in you.
I peppered my hand specialist with questions today— rapid fire as he typed my splint referral into the computer. And he respected them. The questions.
How much movement is okay? What should I watch for? I pack boxes and fold clothes and put things on conveyer belts. Should I splint the finger at work if it starts to feel weird? Is there certain motion I should avoid?
“There are no rules,” he said. “Just be careful and the occasional splinting wouldn’t be bad. I’ll see you in a month.
He made eye contact with me as if to say, “you know your body. Follow your gut.”
But he also knows I’m the patient who kept a finger cast on longer than the average Joe. So maybe, just maybe, he trusts me.
For previous installments on my finger injury: click here.
Angel Ackerman 