An Ordinary Month

Today is October 22nd, 2025. The time is 4:08 p.m. I am again dictating using the voice dictation on Windows 11. It works well, but you must be careful what you say, because it inserts every word it hears. And that may not be good in some cases. My last post mentioned my endocrinologist, then I wrote "Jesus". I didn't see Jesus. I saw Dr. Ayes, but he was Jewish. Very nice fella.

This morning I went to the lab and got the bloodwork he ordered. My iron, B12, and insulin were all normal. Nice to know. I'm waiting to see if my insurance will cover the shot he's requesting. 

Although my pain levels have decreased slightly, I have a lot of pain in my right hand, and my second finger is swollen. I can't straighten it as much as I could before I hurt it, and the pain extends all the way between my knuckles today. On Sunday, I couldn't use the first two fingers, and it hurt to move either of them. I don't think it's broken, but I think I dislocated it when I hurt it. It snapped back in and sounded like a rubber band. 

Yes, it's painful.

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Today is Friday, October 24th, 2025. I went to the Orthopedic Associates today to have my finger X-rayed to ensure I have not broken it. I have not had it broken.. I don't remember if I mentioned it in a previous post or not. Period. Last Saturday I moved a table I have in the living room. It's one of these little sea tables that you just pick up just about anywhere.. Mine came from Amazon. They don't weigh 10 pounds. Anyway, I just picked it up with one hand to move it away from the chair. And my second finger was  dislocated at the middle joint.

In case you're wondering, this is an excruciating experience. When I saw my finger was tilted to one side, I popped it back up. By the next morning, I could not use the first 2 fingers of my hand. The pain radiated from my finger. Down between the first and third fingers all the way to my wrist, and on the palm as well. It was excruciating.. I could pick nothing up. Could not make a fist. Could not brush my hair. I could not put a glove on to wash dishes. I am not blessed with a dishwasher.

This week has been unpleasant. Since the doctor pulled me off the anti-inflammatory meds, I have had all-encompassing pain throughout my body. The hand injury has made it worse because now the hand hurts and the wrist that was already hurting is worse. I would say I'm thankful it was just my right hand. I'm left handed. Since the injury to my shoulder a couple of years ago was repaired, and I had one arm for several months that was functional, I've realized that I am a lot more ambidextrous than I thought.

I digress. The trip to the ortho doctor was helpful because it let me know the finger was not broken and there didn't appear to be any damage. The doctor told me that if I did in fact dislocate it,. I probably just injured the soft tissue. He also explained to me that those with rheumatoid arthritis conditions often had weak connective tissue. He also told me it will take about three weeks to heal. I thanked him for both encouraging details.

So that's where we finish the week. I don't know about you, but it's one I'm glad to see gone. I've had miserable sleep and miserable days when I was awake. It's very hard to get comfortable in the bed when so much of your body hurts. I've had shoulder pain. I've had neck pain. My hands hurt. I wear elastic gloves at night to keep my hands from swelling, and that's probably the only thing that's kept the injured hand from swelling. During the day it swelled quite a bit, and I tried heat to help that. It didn't work, but it felt good.

I will say that the increase in Cymbalta seems to have helped some. I went back to a low dose (30mg) after I had a reaction to the higher dose (60mg). That pill was larger than the 30mg,  and two doctors said it might be the fillers used in the pill that I was reacting to. I don't know that. However, on the off chance that it was, I started taking two of the 30kg. After a week, I've had none of the side effects I experience with the larger pill. Lesson learned.

Once again, I am using the voice recognition software in Windows 11 to type this because my hand hurts. It works better than the previous version. So I will use this a lot more. I just can't type as well with these hands as I did in the past. Correcting things is not as effective as it was in the previous version. I say that because right now I'm using it in Windows Notepad. It's more like a DOS-based program that comes with your computer. And it works well in that app, except for corrections. I have to go back and manually do those. That's annoying. In the old version, I could tell it what to correct, and it would correct it. But this version seems to work more smoothly and effectively than the previous version. Corrections aside.

So, I will end this post today by saying: I'm not in as dark a place as I was last week. But it's still pretty dark. I'm tired of the pain. And it's been horrible. But don't mind me. Go out and have a good weekend.