Saturday, April 12, 2008

PERSONAL LIFE INVASION: IN PAIN

I'm not physically in pain. But I wish I was.

TLP is fighting a wrist condition called Kienbock's Disease. Basically, a dinky bone in the middle of the wrist loses its ability to get blood and slowly disintegrates, causing all sorts of pain and havoc. Blessedly, it's in her left wrist, not her dominant right. But over the last few months, she's really suffered from it. And nothing seems to work -- wrist braces, injections, pain relievers, nothing helps the pain. It keeps her from sleeping well, it limits her work and keeps her from feeling halfway decent about anything.

Funny thing, though: She says she's whining.

She is enduring an amount of pain that would leave me fetal in bed with my cell phone turned off. I would fold, collapse and go postal. Yet she thinks she's whining, as if that withering bone was a fingernail that got cut too deep into the quick. I don't know how she does it. She is so tough. Her endurance staggers me. Here's the thing: Even though I couldn't handle it like she does, I'd give anything to take some of that pain for her. I'd sell my soul to the devil (if he existed) to have that dinky, blood-starved bone in my wrist and not hers. I'd give up the card tricks if it meant she could sleep at night.

The only option left is surgery: They'll fuse her wrist so that she'll lose most of her mobility. In other words, she won't be able to slap my face, but she'll be able to punch it, and give my arm a rope burn afterward. And hopefully, mercifully, it will stop the pain.

This is the ultimate frustration, and I guess I'm having a weak moment in dealing with it. The woman I love is in pain and there is absolutely nothing I can do to ease it.



Comments:
If the pain was ten times worse, or even a hundred times, I would still be the luckiest woman in the world to have you in my life.


And by the way...after the surgery I WILL be able to slap you. KAPOW!!! You just think about that. ;)
 
I have the disease too and there is a lunate replacement surgery that a 64 y.o. man had and has had success with it. I would rather have the pain than go through what you and my doctor describe. Rocky
 
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