my young apprentice

Yesterday's rigorous Bunny day was a good test of this round's haphazard PT.

Actually, this was the easy part, finally collapsing after 7 hours of nonstop superkid
after she was done mauling us.

I was supposed to have 12 physical therapy sessions wrapped up by Thanksgiving, but life happens and my therapist had to hand off all her people during emergency and recovery, so my scheduling has been bumped around umpteen times while I've been passed around several different therapists working her stuff into their own. I got good therapists, I always do, but the scheduling wound up really strung out and I've still got 2 sessions left, will hopefully be assessed out by the person who started me.

Anyway, was able to handle picking Bunny up way more than in the past, not croaking off post-Bunny nearly like I used to, but boy howdy, can sure tell in the arm nerves and especially my hands where we've been working on nerve entrapment. I think my therapy taking so long and all the rest in between (no arm workouts during nerve healing, just the nerve glides) has helped a lot. I'm still overworking and overusing my arms and hands because I just always have all my life, but I'm doing it with awareness now. I've been stopping more and learning to do things differently. Still, that didn't stop me dropping that jar earlier this week. They keep saying my muscles are exceptionally strong, but that means nothing if there is nerve fail, and my nerve weakness is really bad. Really hoping I can get that back. Can't help remembering that dream about losing my hand, because this has been creepily close to more disability. My mom went through so much fail she couldn't even squeeze a little ball or feed herself because her arms and hands got so bad.

The worst post-Bunny areas are left elbow and right hand. It's all I can do to lift a coffee pot this morning after lifting a 28 pound child a few times yesterday, so back to rest and nerve glides. I've apparently lived with ulnar nerve entrapment for most of my grown up life.

"If the nerve is very compressed or has been compressed for a long time, muscle wasting in the hand can occur. Once this happens, muscle wasting cannot be reversed. For this reason, it is important to see your doctor if symptoms are severe or if they are less severe but have been present for more than 6 weeks."

Six weeks? Ha! For years I was told it's not arthritis or even tennis elbow. Doctors have been blowing this off since the 90s, and it was swelled a little that whole time. Guess what, a few PT sesssions for nerve entrapment and the swelling is gone...

Same with the carpal tunnel. I see they don't have hand-milking goats and other farm chores on that list of possible causes. My hands were ruined before I was even old enough to legally drink. Child labor laws don't apply across some cultures and belief systems. I've thought a lot about children who used to be apprenticed out or taken to work in factories. There are some pretty gruesome stories of children being used to crawl into tight spaces and being accidentally killed in the machinery. I heard plenty of farm accident stories growing up, everything from hashed up limbs to weird deaths. It's probably a miracle I can even type at all, given the diabetes, severe fibro, and brain crash in the years since on top of that. All I know is I've got a will of steel and I don't want to stop. I'm not done yet.

This was one of our calmer activities yesterday. We were kind of expecting this, she loves being busy.


It's even more fun watching her when you remember where she comes from- Winter Games- me & @bonenado in real life.