Doctors, Therapists, Runners, and Cavemen

3 1/2 months after breaking my finger, I was told today by my orthopedic specialist that she was "cutting me loose." So no more doctors, no more occupational therapists, just more bending and straightening and special splints to get it straighter and more bending to get it flexible, though it's almost entirely there. I'm typing! Look at me, I'm typing!

1 1/2 weeks after starting the Paleo Diet, I'm feeling pretty good and noticing what may be improvements in both my lungs and my skin. There are so many variables involved, including allergens and pollutants and who knows what else, that it's hard to say for sure. But I think so. I'm amazed at the volume of fruits, vegetables, and meat that I'm eating. Every few days, I have to make yet another trip to the grocery store because the giant pile of produce and meat that I thought would last me a week or more is gone. The Paleo Diet combined with Thumper's addiction to bananas is sending me shopping far more than I'd like. It's more expensive, too. But I'm still losing weight.

I've been struggling on the exercise front. By all appearances, I'm still progressing (with the exception of 100 Push Ups; I've tried week 3 twice now, and both times I've been unable to meet the requirements of day 3), with improvements on my inclines on 5K's and on my speed on 10K's, but it's been much harder to keep running. A couple of times over the past couple of weeks, I've quit before reaching the distance goals I set for myself. One of the "So-and-so's Story" anecdotes in the book was about a former Olympic athlete who agreed to try Paleo for a month, certain that his athletic improvement couldn't possibly improve without the pasta carb loading. At 2 weeks, he thought he was well on the way to proving he was right, because his energy levels were lower, but another 2 weeks changed his mind. Maybe the next couple of weeks will see my energy bumping up, too.

Of course, maybe it's a crisis of motivation and not of energy. I haven't, in the times that I've quit before achieving what I wanted, reached the point of puking that Le Trevolution acquainted me with when he kindly gave me an introduction to Crossfit last October ("that's the puke bucket; that's the chalk bucket. Don't puke in the chalk bucket."), so maybe I'm not pushing myself as hard as I could. But finishing has been tough. Maybe I need to change my focus from running for awhile, but with Cap 10K next weekend, I think I'll stick with the running for now.

So anyway. That's what's up with me. What's up with you?

The Finger Revisited

I broke my finger on December 8, and today was finally my last day of occupational therapy. I've learned that there's a difference between physical and occupational therapy, but please don't ask me to explain it. I'm amazed that a broken pinky has taken so much time and work to return to (nearly) mint condition. I say "nearly" because it's still a little stiff, sore, and weak, but if I work at it for a few minutes, I can bend it far enough to touch the tip of my pinky to my palm. That's pretty good since not long ago I called it "an intricately detailed wooden carving of a finger."

Thumper warmed up to the whole idea of going to the therapist 2 and 3 times a week, so much so that when I told him that today would be the last time we'd see Ms. Lisa, he said, "Don't say that!" It's been a long, strange three months, and the moral of the story is: don't break your bones.

Good News, Bad News

Six weeks away from the gym, and wow, it was hard. It's amazing how quickly fitness fades when it's not used. The good news is that I went. Also, I've gained less than I guessed. The bad news is that I was only able run for 12 consecutive minutes before walking, and at a slower speed with a flatter incline. I also did some weight exercises on the machines, but at less weight than previously. But at least I went, and at least I discovered that I am able to do some weight training with my still-broken finger (I went back to the orthopedic specialist last week and had another x-ray, which still looks remarkably like the old x-ray: a scattered jigsaw puzzle. Occupational therapy is helping, but I still can't bend the it.).

Now to just keep on keepin' on!

I'm in Therapy...

...and Thumper is just not happy about it. My broken finger is healing well, but when the orthopedic specialist held it and asked me to wiggle the tip and I couldn't generate so much as a twitch, she said, "You need to be in physical therapy. Now. Tomorrow."

I was unconvinced about the wisdom of beginning a plan of treatment that involved somebody forcibly bending my finger when the bone is still in pieces, but now that I've been to two PT sessions, I understand that the injury itself wasn't the biggest hurdle on my way to recovery; instead it's the tendons and ligaments that have tightened up during the three weeks that my fourth and fifth fingers were immobilized in a splint. Maybe y'all already knew this, but it's stunning to me. Three weeks without moving it, and it's as if it were an intricately detailed wooden carving of a finger.

I strain to bend it until the muscles in my forearm ache and the rest of my fingers are trembling from the effort, and nothing happens. I stare at it and try to bend it with my mind like a spoon in a magic trick, and it just sits there. I try to type because my physical therapist says that's an excellent exercise for it, and it hovers above the keyboard. If so short a period of immobility has turned my tendons into stone, how is it possible that anyone who has been bed-ridden for any length of time ever manages to get up and walk again?

I took Thumper with me on Monday morning, and he colored in his coloring book and chatted with several therapists and patients as they went through their exercises. To keep him from getting scared or upset, I tried hard not to show pain on my face or in my voice as my therapist forced my finger to bend. As she was working on my hand, I asked her about toe walking, something Thumper does when he's barefoot around the house. Our pediatrician has been concerned for as long as Thumper's been walking, but I've ignored his concerns because it was something he mostly did when he was nervous, like during doctor visits. Recently, it's seemed like he might be doing it more, so I brought it up with my physical therapist. She called over another therapist who works with children more, and he had a couple of suggestions, including putting swim fins on him at home to force him to heel strike when he walks. The more we talked about it, the darker the cloud over Thumper's head became and the less he had to say. Finally I asked him if he was mad, and he said, "Yes, because I don't want physical therapy!" None of what we talked about involved him getting PT, but he made the leap in his mind and decided getting PT was definitely a bad thing, even though I wasn't writhing in pain, nor was anyone else in the office that day.

So when I told him last night that we would be going to physical therapy again today (our second PT appointment), he said, "Are you going a million times? I'm going to do something fun with Mama when you go."

At 3 times per week, it's going to be a long four weeks...

I Give You: The Finger

I broke the little finger on my left hand today, and I'm just giddy about it. It makes me inordinately happy. I know; it makes no sense. It's the second broken bone of my life. I have 2 older brothers who were both Emergency Room regulars, but it took me until I was in my 30's to break my first bone, and that was a tiny little bone in my right wrist that I broke falling down on my bike. This doubles my total count, which is a stupid, macho thing to be happy about, but I just am. There, I said it.

Also, I'm just kind of amazed at the low pain level, which is another stupid, macho thing to be proud of, but there it is. I was riding my scooter, chasing after the boy on his bike on the way back home from getting the mail. I hit a chasm in the sidewalk and watched myself fall in slow motion, almost sure I could recover right up until the moment my glasses went flying and I felt skin on my left hand and knee come off. I stood up, picked up the strewn envelopes, and noticed that the little finger on my left hand was pointing upward at an alarmingly unnatural angle.

I put my glasses back on and thought, "I dislocated my finger. I should straighten it out before it starts to hurt." So I pulled it out and down. It looked better, but was still pointing up and to the left a bit, so I tried again. It still wasn't straight, so I thought, "I should go see a doctor to straighten it out before I make it worse."

Thumper must have heard me fall. He turned back, and seeing me lying in the gutter, yelled, "Daddy!" I told him I was OK, but I had a boo boo. He asked me if I was going to see a dentist. I told him I'd go see a doctor. He said, "OK. We'll eat dinner first."

So we went home, and I called Aerie, who had been planning on working late but rushed home so that I could go to the doctor without bringing the boy along with me. Thumper asked me if my boo boo was all better; I said it was not. He suggested that Gummi worms might make it feel better.

I took 2 Naproxen and made the boy dinner while I waited for Aerie to get home. I began to believe it might be broken, since it appeared to bend at a spot that was not a joint. But it didn't hurt enough to be broken.

So I went to the Urgent Care clinic, and the receptionist filled out my paperwork for me since I'm left-handed. The doctor came in and said, "Let me guess: what did you punch?" I told him my story, and he told me the x-ray tech would be in to see me in a minute. I had 3 x-rays taken, which only hurt a little when the x-ray tech and his trainee wanted a shot from the side, with my hand resting on the injured finger. I asked the tech if it was broken, and he said, "Only the doctor can diagnose. Do you want to see it?" This is the shot I looked at:



Not seeing the straight line across the bone that I expected to see, I said, "Oh, I guess I just dislocated it after all." The tech said, "Only the doctor can diagnose; he'll be in in a minute."

I sat in the exam room for a few minutes until the doctor knocked and entered, declaring, "You broke the crap out of it!" He pointed at the x-ray and said, "It's a mess. You broke it here, and here, and here..." He wrapped it up to the 4th finger and gave me a Vicodin prescription "So you won't be cursing my name at midnight tonight" and told me to see an orthopedic hand specialist in a week or so.

Later, the x-ray tech walked me out to unlock the door since I'd stayed past closing time. I said, "So you must've had a laugh when I said I'd only dislocated it." He said, "Yeah, I told the doctor what you said. We all thought it was pretty funny. I can't say anything, though."

So there you go. I busted my finger in multiple places, and it didn't really hurt much. I'm a man, baby! Yeah!