Still No Cause For Concern

It's been over a month since I last posted here. At the risk of sounding cliche, it's been extremely busy for me. I have some sick relatives who are fighting for their lives, my wife and I am trying to sell our house, and then there is the old standby---we're raising 11 month old triplets by ourselves. So to be sure, I've got a full plate.

In addition to the above, I've been undergoing occupational therapy for my thumb joint. Forgive me if I mentioned this in detail before, but my problem is that I have arthritis in my joint that connects my thumb to my hand. The picture to the left there shows the joint that's been causing me trouble for the last 4-5 years. Near as my doctor can figure out, I broke my hand a few times over the last 15 or so years and never had it treated. The result is that I no longer have any cartilage between that joint, causing the lovely sensation of bone rubbing on bone.

We tried the long shot of trying to improve the pain management with the therapy, but that was more to appease the insurance I have because let's be honest here--- how in the hell is moving my thumb in circles going to grow more cartilage?? It's not, but logic isn't something that is always used in medical decisions. So after three weeks of therapy sessions my thumb hurts worse and is less flexible than it was before. Thank you HMO of Illinois.

What happens next is going to be surgery. Usually this type of situation happens to the elderly, not someone under the age of 40 like myself. I think the most common type is to remove one of the bones in the joint, thus alleviating the pain. The other type is to fuse the joint together. The latter is the surgery I will be having. It's going to restrict some of my mobility, but I won't lose nearly as much strength as I would if they removed a bone. I'll meet with that doctor next week and I should have some better idea of when everything will come into place.

My wife also thinks that I might be having some difficulty with stress management, so she's scheduled me to undergo a thallium stress test. I don't know all the specifics of this test, but my wife seems to think this would be a good idea for me to do considering my age and other health factors. The basic gist I've gotten from this is that I'll be running on a treadmill hooked up to a bunch of monitors that basically checks to see how well my heart pumps blood and how the flow of blood to and from my heart is doing. Damn thing will take three hours supposedly. If they think I'll be running for three hours, I can already tell them that isn't going to happen no matter how hard I try. We'll see how that goes.

In other news, my sister is getting ready to move from Arizona to Kentucky. She's getting the normal pangs of doubt at the moment, but it's a good idea for her and she knows it, so I don't expect her to change her mind. Although she'll be away from her grandson, she'll be a lot closer to me and my kids, which will be nice.

That's it for now, the kids are up from their nap and wanting to eat.