It’s been a while since we talked about my hands (funny how that word has gone from singular to plural in the past several updates!), and today ended up being a great reminder to give y’all a status update!

Right hand: Ivan wrote about it here in back in July,  but here’s a quick refresher. I started having severe right hand pain back in March, diagnosed as DeQuervain’s tenosynovitis. Most likely, my hand was injured in the original December accident but went unnoticed, and then 3 months of being non-wieghtbearing (i.e. I had to lift my full body weight with my hands and arms every single time I needed to move) didn’t give it a chance to rest, let alone heal. We’ve spent the past few months experimenting with therapy, hand braces, and Cortisone injections to the injured tendon (ouch!!!), but by the end of July it looked like none of the above was working and we set a surgery date for September 21st. Well, as you probably noticed, it’s a few days past September 21st…and I haven’t had surgery yet. Personally, I had resigned myself to the procedure back in July, but it looks like God might have another idea now. On the human level, this is  thanks to my tireless occupational therapist who believed that the recovery process (6 weeks of not using my right hand) would be more harmful than helpful, given my left-handed deficits, and kept trying everything she could to promote healing even after we had scheduled the procedure. Another giant “thank you” goes to my precious Ivan, who has kept up with our more physically taxing chores even after he started working, just to make sure my hand had the maximum opportunity to rest and heal. Today I had a re-evaluation with the surgeon, and am delighted to announce that the surgery has been CANCELED! 🙂 Once again, thanks also to everyone who’s been praying specifically for this issue. It’s amazing how God can choose to surprise us!

Left hand: My left hand journey has been more tranquil, compared to the saga above. No, I still can’t feel it. But I CAN do lots of things with it (type, play piano, do basic chores, open medicine bottles, just to name a few). I can also go days without even pausing to dwell on the fact that I can’t feel it. On an even deeper psychological level, I’ve stopped equating a satisfying recovery with getting my sensation back, which gives me far more opportunities to rejoice as I achieve therapy goals and grow more independent again. Side note – I’ve actually forgotten what it was like to be able to feel with that hand. This made seem sad at first glance, but I actually view it as a bizarre but nevertheless useful gift. A gift that allows me to live with a thankful heart in the present and enjoy my “new normal” abilities without moping over how I remember things used to feel.

This season of hand issues has been one of frustration and discouragement at first, then patience…and learning to ask for lots of help throughout (one of the things I’ve traditionally been terrible at!) These are lessons I’ve needed to learn, and still need to practice daily. And yes, I’d love to have been “naturally humble” enough to learn them an easier way, without the hand drama. But as September draws to a close, I’m thankful that God chose the means He saw as best to teach me. I’m thankful that my left hand is now pretty close to the level therapists define as “functional”, even if I can’t feel it. and I’m absolutely thankful to be typing this on my own, without my right hand being immobilized in a post-op splint. God is good!