Well it has been a very long time since I blogged. I do apologize for my tardiness but I do have a legitimate reason and/or excuse. I have been dealing and coping with messed up hands. I fully didn’t comprehend how much one uses there hands until mine were taken out of commission due to severe pain and numbness.
There was numerous times that I couldn’t brush teeth or hair. The thought of having to wash my hair would make me nauseous knowing what kind of pain I would have to endure to complete the task.
There really isn’t a way to describe the feelings of uselessness that I felt and continue to feel (as my hands have not improved to date). It is embarrassing to ask for assistance with simple household chores like washing the dishes or needing someone else to pull the wet laundry out of the washer and move it over to the dryer because the pain involved is too unbearable.
How can I describe the stupidity I feel because I drop things majority of the time as I can’t feel the object in my hand. Or the fact that I fumble for a long time to get change out of my change purse to buy a coffee at Tim Horton’s. I have now become the customer that I would roll my eyes at because they are taking an annoying amount of time to slowly pull out their change to pay.
It has been a huge learning curve for me to change my routine to get things done and having to take the time to complete a task and learning to ask for assistance. I have had to adjust my way of thinking to cope with not being able to do things that I normally love to do (i.e.: painting or drawing) because of the pain. I have battled many days that I was down in the dumps from feeling useless, fed up of the pain, annoyed that I couldn’t do a task or having to wait upon someone else to do it for me. I am an independent women and having the taken away from me is something traumatic all together on its own.
I have been extremely lucky to have the support of my friends, family, loved ones and co-workers during this whole process. I have been so frustrated dealing with WCB and doctors as they tried to figure out what could be causing my hands to become this way. I have gone for a bone scan, ultrasound, x-rays, nerve conductivity testing and MRI. They are all baffled on what this could be. They have ruled out carpal tunnel and know that I was battling tendinitis and tendinsynovitis but there was not immediate findings to explain all my symptoms.
I discovered very fast that WCB looks for a quick fix and only tests the area where your symptoms are and doesn’t really care to find out exactly what is going on. They do things to make your life harder then it should be. I had to cancel all of my summer vacation because of WCB. They placed me in the most retarded physiotherapy program that was mandatory for me to attend. If I failed to attend then they would cut of my benefits; so bye-bye camping trips. It was hard for me to tell my husband and daughter that mommy had to stay home and not attend our planned vacation. It was heartbreaking to see their disappointment and anger when I suggested that they go without me so that they could have a vacation at least. Everyone was extremely aggravated and angry that they physiotherapy program the placed me into did not help but in fact made me regress further than what it was like in the very beginning. What we couldn’t comprehend is why WCB yanked me out away from my physiotherapist that was getting me results and improving my symptoms to attend this program that was unsupervised and didn’t give the time of day to the WCB patients and never listen to me when I was telling them that the stretching and exercises were increasing my pain.
As WCB does not have a definitive diagnosis to date they have dropped my claim and I am currently left to figure this out on my own with my family doctor. Now here is the awesome news!! Since WCB has dropped my claim I now have to do the waiting game. It will take me six to nine months to get my other MRI of my neck, shoulders and spine done. Once that is completed it will take me three to six months to get in to see the upper extremity specialist. Also, because WCB has dropped me I am back to work with numb hands and fingers, sharp shooting pains that go from my fingertips up to my elbow whenever I use my hands for too long (being a typist by trade doesn’t make rest very plausible).
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