random thoughts – Day 1,868 – (Monday) – plate and bump and x-ray vision

There was a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, scheduled last Friday after I finally remembered to call. For a couple weeks, the surgery scar had been doing crazy stuff. It looks like it's glowing red and weird, and sometimes is sensitive and needs to be covered with a bandaid when wearing long sleeves to keep the fabric from rubbing on it. The real kick was when there was pain in three fingers and down the top of my hand and forearm when grasping and pulling leaves from the flower beds. Every time. While leaves won’t need to be pulled forever, the action of grasping and pulling may be required on an ongoing basis.

X-ray visions.

There were more x-rays, which seem to be the warm up act at every appointment. The assistant, followed by the doctor, were not especially concerned about the scar and the pain, but I did learn new nuggets of info concerning my wrist. The first was that the plate may need to be removed eventually because my wrists are all small-boned and dainty and the plate “sits proud” as the assistant said. Basically, it’s not flush with the bone and makes a bump in my wrist, and a tendon rubs and clicks over it, but only when I move my hand, so no real worries, right? 

I figured the plate is what caused the bump, but this was the first mention of removing said plate after the bone is fully healed, and if my scar hadn’t started randomly glowing and feeling all Harry Potter weird and my fingers hadn't screamed at me when I pulled some dead leaves, I might not have known this any time soon.

The second nugget was that there is a small bone chip near my outer wrist bone. What, what? The assistant pointed it out on the x-ray, then said it’s too small to be dealt with, but it can rub on the soft bits in the wrist, which explains the ongoing tenderness and swelling in that area.

The instructions before I left the doctor’s office were “take Motrin” and “come back in three weeks.” Um, okay. See you then, I guess. And until then, I’ll be hyper-fixated on the wrist, the plate that sits proud, the bump, the bone chip, and the tendon. Things I was blissfully unaware of until this afternoon.