I had a little surgery the day after Christmas – at least that what I thought.  Okay, carpal tunnel release surgery. No biggie.  Lots of people have this.  I’ll be fine in a couple of days.  Right? WRONG!  I should have paid attention when the lady at the doctor’s office gave me an “after surgery “sheet that has all this information to remember.   But my favorites:

 Number One: You cannot use your hand for ten days.  What?  That’s silly, I’ll be using my hand much sooner than that.

 Number Two:  You need to dress the wound four times a day. What?  Seriously?  What is this, like a major operation?  Now, I need to let you know that I’ve never had stitches – ever.  Nope, not even when I had babies.  So, I have no stitches frame of reference.  And let’s hang on that archaic form of wound closure – let’s grab a needle and some thread and let’s whip this baby closed.  And my stitches do not look very pretty – this isn’t a quilter’s handiwork, looks more like something the guy who made Frankenstein would have whipped up.

 Number Three:  Take pain medications A LOT – okay, it didn’t say that, but it should.  And I did.  I don’t like pain. Not any. At all.  I figure if you give me medicine that stops the pain, then I need to take it.

 After surgery, I felt fine.  I later realized that I was still reeling from the effects of the stuff they dripped into that IV.  My hand left fine and it just had this bandage on it.  No big deal, right? WRONG.

 My hand felt fine because I couldn’t feel it.  It was numb, for about 12 hours.  When the feeling starting coming back, I didn’t feel so good.  I swallowed the pain pills and fell asleep.  And that was pretty much the next five days.  Wake, take a pain pill, sleep, repeat.

After five days, I got tired of not knowing what was happening in the world and I woke up.  My hand still hurt but not as bad, but I still couldn’t use it.  So, I quickly learned what you really need your right hand for. 

 Hairspray.  Have you ever sprayed your hair with your left hand.  I sprayed, but very little hit my hair, not that it mattered, I couldn’t fix it anyway.  Which brings me to:

 Fixing your hair.  Now, I’m not vain, but I do like my hair to NOT look like I’ve just stepped out of a hurricane force wind tunnel on a bad hair day. You can’t fix your hair with one bad hand.  I gave up and just slapped a cap on my head.

 Clicking the remote: I don’t have the clicking dexterity in my left that I do in my right.  I almost missed recording the opening of  The Bachelor. Thankfully, I was able to manage even with my disability.

 Scooping Ice Cream: I know what you’re thinking, scoop left.  Not that easy. I pinned the ice cream under my arm and tried with all that I have to scoop out just two descent scoops of Mint chocolate Chip ice cream (it has magical healing powers).  I just squished the container – which brings me to this: what happened to the sturdy ice cream containers? Why is everything so flimsy these days?  Is that a green thing? Please.  Don’t get me started. 

 There’s so much more I couldn’t do without that right hand, but it’s slowly coming back – I’m even typing and I’ve given up the pain meds.  After I just didn’t have a clue who I’d talked to all day and I wasn’t even sure where I’d been, I thought it best to bite the bullet and suffer through.  I’m making it. 

 Have a great Today!!