P-P-P-P-P-P-P is for Pinky

Lo, it is a big day. Because today, I am typing two-handed. Even the little pinky is pulling its weight. Just look at all those beautiful Ps!

Because of that damn pinky, for the past near two months I could not: type with any semblance of accuracy or speed, hold a knife (which ruled out most cooking, unless J-P was around to serve as my sous chef), wash dishes (which I can't say I missed), hold a book especially comfortably, do yoga, write with my dominant hand, drive, run, do push-ups, ride a bike, do most chores around the house, pick up anything remotely heavy, or wash my left arm. Although I did manage to adapt a little bit and taught myself to write somewhat legibly with my left hand, tie my shoes using my left hand and two fingers of my right, pull my hair into a ponytail the same way, and shave my legs left-handed.

Today marks seven weeks post-op, and already this week I've seen whole lot of a improvement in my mobility and finally FINALLY! I can resume some of my activities. I went for a run! And drove to my therapy appointment! And washed a few pots and pans! And put them away! And typed this with ease!

Seriously, you have no idea how freeing this is.

There's still plenty of room for improvement and things I still cannot do. I'm still a long ways off from anything that requires me to bend my hand back from my wrist (no bike, no downward dog, and no push-ups, for a start) and cannot do any heavy gripping with my right hand (have to use two hands to pick up anything heavy and have to be especially careful around doorknobs).

But, this is progress. Sweet, sweet progress.

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The second-most important finger

Some pictures below may not be for the weak-of-stomach.  Consider yourself warned.

So I must tell you about my club hand, as J-P so thoughtfully calls it.  I've been wearing this contraption for over a week now, and I've got at least another three to go, plus another four to six weeks of therapy beyond that.

You may note that it is my right hand, and, yes, I am right-handed.  So I've had to learn to do all sorts of things left-handed, although my handwriting looks rather like a four-year-old's, I need help washing my entire left arm, and anything that requires two hands is ne'r impossible.  As for typing, I couldn't afford one of those nifty one-handed keyboards, so I'm alternating between a left-hand-only approach and the ooh-so-sporty homemade-stylus approach:

How did I manage to do this to myself, you ask?  You'd think, between the club hand, the therapy, the weeks and weeks of treatment, that it's at least a bad sprain, if not a broken bone or some sort of mangled palm or something like that.  But no.  All of this has come about because -- wait for it -- I cut my pinky.

Short version of the how-it-happened part of the story:  My birthday.  Celebratory homemade dinner.  Shucking oysters.  Butter knife.  Whoopsie.  

Anyway, I didn't end up in the ER until the next day because (A) it was my birthday and (B) once the bleeding let up, which it did rather quickly, I figured that it wasn't anything that a martini couldn't fix.  But the next day, when my pinky wouldn't bend on its own, leaving me with permanent tea-party-pinky, I thought I should have it checked out.

(Lesson: If the question is "should I go to the ER for this?" then the answer is "um, YES.")

And before I knew it, I had a diagnosis of a severed flexor tendon and there was a hand specialist in my room in the ER prepping for surgery.  Here was my hand pre-surgery, swollen from the anesthesia, with tea-party-pinky still in full effect.  Note that the cut itself (that tiny little line on the middle knuckle of my pinky) is barely noticeable: 

Because the surgery was relatively minor (local anesthesia, under an hour start to finish), it all went down right there in the ER, and I could document it for posterity.  That white line in the middle of the incision is my (repaired) tendon:

A few reflections and lessons from this whole experience:

• It would be nice to have a Xanax to take the edge off right before they saw into one of your extremities.
• My sister had to assist with the surgery, I kid you not.  The effect of budget cuts, I guess.  No fewer than three times, the doc asked V to hand him this or that off the tray or out of a drawer. 
• In the middle of surgery, the doctor pauses, and then says, "INT-eresting."  I mean, come on.  Don't they teach you in Bedside Manner 101 not to say shit like that when the patient is awake?
• I took a bunch of pictures of the surgery (obviously), but at the key moment, after the doc completed the repair but before he sewed my finger back up, he scrubbed out so he could take a picture with his own camera for his records. 
• Apparently, the pinky is the second-most important finger.  Having spent twenty-four hours without a functioning pinky (not to mention the last two weeks with an out-of-commission hand), I can say with certainty that it's true.  Try writing without your pinky to help grip the pen.  Or picking up a heavy bowl without using your pinky to help steady the bottom.  Not easy, not at all.
• And finally, if you ever have a similar misfortune, hopefully you too will end up with a zig-zagging scar, so instead of tea-party-pinky, you can have a Harry Potter pinky just like mine:

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The 3500 Club

The traffic gods must have been smiling on us this past weekend.  Because otherwise, I don't know how we managed to get out of town on a holiday weekend and avoid all traffic, both coming and going.  (It might have something to do with leaving the city at noon on Friday and coming back Sunday night, before the crowds started pouring back in on Monday, but I'm going with the traffic gods.)

And so, unencumbered by traffic, we were able to relax and make full use of the beautiful weather.  We got in fifteen miles of hiking over the course of two days, and made it up three of the Catskills' 35ers -- 35 peaks in the Catskills that are over 3500 feet in elevation, basically the east coast's answer to Colorado's famed 14ers.  (My Colorado-based uber-outdoorsy brother-in-law can go ahead and stop laughing right about now.)

Save for the bugs that chased us into the tent a full two hours before dark, we had a great night camping on the side of Slide Mountain about two miles from the summit:

We took off early the next A.M., 

reaching the summit of Slide before any of the day-hikers could beat us up there.

Of course, J-P *had* to get a picture of himself popping up over the side of the rock formation at the top of Slide, so as to suggest that he had scaled that rock, while looking no worse for the wear.  (Actually, there was quite a lot of rock scaling, but neither of us was about to whip out a camera while we're holding on to a rock ledge ten feet up.  So J-P's reenactment will just have to do.)

After Slide came Cornell Mountain, followed by Wittenberg, with some pretty outstanding views made even better by the perfectly clear weather.

That's three down, and only thirty-two to go!

(Maybe.  We'll see.)

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Three years in, and I'm still hanging around

Three years ago, I published this.  Two years ago, I managed to remember the Rhino Legs blogiversary, albeit a few days late.  And then, one year ago, I just let the 18th of May pass without mention.

But!  One repeating calendar event later and, Google help me, I will never miss another blogiversary again!

Now, if you're an avid reader of the Rhino Legs empire, you may realize that I'm celebrating a blogiversary over at Strawberry Beret today too.  That, my friends, is a complete accident.  I launched SB exactly a year to the day after I launched RL, which was totally unplanned.  It's like having kids that are different ages, but have the same birthday.   Weird, no?

Thanks for reading all you, whoever and wherever you are, and for sticking it out through my more and less productive periods.  I hope you'll stick around a bit longer.

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Life: An Update

Well, Brooklyn, here we are.

Most of the boxes are unpacked, the lights and the cable are all hooked up, we've entertained our first overnight guests, and thrown our first little dinner party.  We're getting to know the neighbors and the neighborhood.  Mostly, we've felt like we've found a good spot and have been warmly welcomed: anticipating the coming summer in our lovely backyard garden, sharing our first meal with our new house-mates, getting to know the woman who pulls espressos at the coffee shop and the guy who runs the wine shop, exchanging friendly hellos with a neighbor during our four-times-weekly observance of alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules.

And then there are the things that it will take a little longer to get (re-)used to.  There's the tune of the ice cream truck, stopped at the school down the block at least an hour every afternoon, the sound of which seems like it will haunt my nightmares forever.  And there's the constant, incessant honking, even in our otherwise quiet and mostly residential neighborhood, making clear the impotence of the "Don't Honk" signs that appear every block.  Was I just immune to the honking before?  Or did I somehow forget?  And there's the music pouring out of the car windows on the street below -- if it is that loud in our second-floor living room, sir, just how loud is it in your little Toyota?  And, of course, the little reminders that there are hooligans everywhere, like the hooligans who kindly decided to remove a side-view mirror from our car the other night, leaving behind only a broken piece of plastic and some trailing wires.

But the mirror will be replaced, even as we consider, a little more seriously, procuring a more secure spot for our car.  As for the noise, it will surely soon become a familiar soundtrack as we relax into our lives here.

We're home.

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