I just got back home after my first appointment with an occupational therapist for my thumb injury. And I have homework!

The thumb exercises feel a little silly, but I recognize the importance of encouraging mobility.

She also sent me home with instructions to make a rice sock, ha ha, but I'd forgotten that we already had one! It was nice to get confirmation on applying heat, though.

I did a little heat therapy while I was there, too. It was a strange little machine. Check this thing out:

My right arm went into a cloth sack, basically, that closed with velcro at the top and opened into this box that blows hot air and ground up corn husks around. It felt kind of like ... soft sand. So I sat there playing with the stuff for ten minutes, interspersed with some of the thumb exercises, basically just grasping handfuls of it and letting it go.

It was very sensory! And the heat felt really good, too. I'll definitely be using the rice sock! I can't believe I didn't think of it, actually. Oh well.

Now I have it. And exercises.

Oh and here's my custom fitted thumb brace, which I actually am pretty tickled with because it WORKS.

It was actually pretty neat watching her make it, too, taking this wet pliable material with two holes cut into it, pushing my thumb through first one hole and then the second one as she quickly worked to form it into shape before it hardened. It was really cool!

So.

It's a soft tissue injury in my first thumb joint. Probably a ligament or tendon that runs along the right/inside of my thumb. There might be some micro tears.

And the bad news is that it might take a long time to heal. Like a LONG time. Maybe even a year.

Which is a total bummer.

But I've already modified a lot of my daily habits to minimize stress on it. I use my left hand to hold my coffee cup now. Mostly. I wait for help to make the beds. I modified my pencil grip for writing and try not to do too much of it. And it took all of one time mixing pizza dough for me before my husband followed through on something he's been threatening to do since we got married 15 years ago: buy a standup kitchen mixer.

So we have that monstrosity now. But we found a place under the cabinets for it to live (in this house, anyway) so it doesn't have to take up real estate on the counter 24/7. AND we will be testing it out on some pizza dough tomorrow! Wish me luck.

As for my crocheting (and spinning and painting etc etc), I should be able to keep working so long as I'm careful and take breaks. No pushing through a little pain to just finish out the bobbin... (Oops.) Since that's probably what started all of this in the first place!

It's just going to take time to heal, so I have to be patient. And do my exercises, of course.

I'm MOST thankful that it is an injury that should heal eventually, without surgery, and is not the onset of arthritis, which terrifies me. I've had mild to moderate joint pain since my early twenties, so I'm kind of just waiting for the inflammation to move in for good.

I joke that painting is my retirement plan, but the truth is I don't know if I'll be able to keep crocheting into my old age and I just don't think I'll be able to give up expressing my creativity through color and texture! So I've been experimenting with different mediums, looking for a balance that fuels my creative spirit and is also sustainable long term.

Which probably means no marathon crochet sessions! I don't like to sit still that long anymore anyway, though.

Remember to take breaks, y'all! Stand up and stretch. Refocus your eyeballs on things that are far away. Across the room our better yet, outside while you go for a walk. Maybe I'll start taking a midday walk around the block after lunch... That actually sounds really nice!

But for now, I have a magazine project to finish up! ;) The deadline approaches!

-Connie

P.S. Apparently this is the email for un-pretty pictures, ha ha, with my weird thumb therapy session and now..... it appears that Dipper is sitting on some eggs on our (very dirty) front porch! Carson is going to be SO excited. Patrick not so much, ha ha. New adventures await! (Talk about a chicken update, eh?)