Mommy By The Book » gross stuff

I think I’ve found a good excuse to never run on the treadmill again

Rachel — Thu, 19 May 2011 20:29:09 +0000

My cute girl with two functioning, non-mangled hands

So, do you want the good news or the bad news first? Bad news? Ok then, glad we agree.

Two weeks ago the husband was running on the treadmill in the basement while our daughter played and watched cartoons in the same room. We’ve had this set-up for a while, we’ve had conversations about never ever ever touching the treadmill while it is on, and all has gone smoothly. You can see where this is going. For some inexplicable reason my little girl decided to wander on over and stick her sweet, soft, innocent little hand under the moving treadmill belt and IT GOT STUCK.

My husband called me at work, in a panic because Claire was completely freaking out and would not stop screaming, even to the point of throwing up. I was trapped, having joined a carpool (which is a post in itself) the week before. From what I could gather there was very little blood, but a lot of skin had been taken off and my poor girl was miserable. There wasn’t anything that looked like it needed to be stitched up, even though her hand was quite mangled, so we didn’t go to the ER. It looked like what it needed was some good old fashioned antibacterial ointment, some time to heal, and some major TLC. That day (and the next few as well) that girl got whatever she wanted in our desperate attempt to bring her any sort of comfort and happiness. Watch movies all day? Sure! You want popsicles for dinner? You got it! Here, have some chocolate too!!

The following days were downright heartbreaking and completely stressful for all of us. Her hand had to be bandaged and protected. The first night I loosely taped some gauze to her hand, slathering it all with antibacterial ointment. The next morning, to my horror, the gauze had dried to her oozing, open wounds. We had to try to force her hand underwater per her doctor’s suggestion (which is painful on such sensitive wounds) and then yank the gauze off. Just typing that sentence makes me ill all over again. I’m sure I don’t even need to describe the howling on my daughter’s part. I raced to the nearest pharmacy in a frenzy, sweeping into my basket non-stick gauze and antibacterial sprays and band-aids with cartoon characters on them and anything else that looked remotely helpful.

In an effort to protect her damaged hand, my girl would keep it in a fist and wouldn’t let anyone or anything near it. While I praised her basic survival instincts and tenacity at keeping us from touching it, that hand absolutely had to be tended to in order to prevent infection and ensure proper healing. Even in her sleep, if I would try to touch her hand to adjust the bandages she would quickly jerk it away. Changing the bandages became a 3-man job that I would dread for over an hour before the appointed time to make it happen with the assistance of one of her grandmothers. Grandma would hold her tightly in her lap, while my husband gingerly pried her shredded fingers open and I sprayed and bandaged and taped as quickly as my inexperienced hands would allow. Claire made sure to fulfill her role in this as well and would scream and thrash as much as she possibly could. Each bandaging session left me feeling guilty for causing her pain, frazzled, and beyond anxious. Luckily, after several days this process was downgraded from a 3-man job to a 2-man operation and now, finally, is one-woman gig. (Lucky me).

Things looked like they were making slow but steady progress on most of her hand, but her 4th finger (the ring finger on her left hand, no less) just is not keeping up. That poor finger got the worst of the damage, it seems, and has had great difficulty healing. For almost a week I couldn’t even get a good look at it because she would not open her hand for anything, and when we’d force her hand open all the thrashing about prevented me from seeing much. A few days ago she FINALLY started opening her hand on command, even patiently allowing me to bandage her up with only minor whimpering, and one part of her finger is still all gooey and oozy and fleshy and mangled and just…awful. On Monday she began acting lethargic and feverish, and I panicked thinking infection had set in at last and called the doctor.

Fortunately, the doctor didn’t seem as panicked as I felt and offered some good advice and prescribed an antibiotic to stave of what looked to be just the beginnings of a bacterial infection. He did say, though, that while it looked like tissue was regenerating in the deepest part of the wound, it appeared there was still dead tissue stuck in there that needed to come out. I’m pretty sure I lost all color at that point, because he quickly assured me I wouldn’t have to scrub it, for heavens sake, but we still would need to care for it. He suggested wrapping it in regular gauze as opposed to the non-stick kind, allowing it to dry and stick to the wound, soaking it in water and then taking it off in an effort to remove the dead tissue with it. My stomach immediately knotted up and I wanted to positively beg him to take my daughter home with him for the next 3 days so he could take care of it, because I was done. I could NOT intentionally cause my daughter any more pain. No no no no no.

The unfortunate thing about being a parent is that you cannot simply drop your child off with someone else when the tough stuff happens. You now must be the hero. I remember reading an article once in my pre-child days where the writer described his young child dealing with some sort of worm/parasite thing? And for weeks when they changed a diaper, they had to search for the appearance of said worm emerging from his child’s bowels, and then pull the worm the rest of the way out. (I really hope you aren’t eating right now.) As the author described it: “it’s a damn horror show.” That’s pretty much what played through my head and provided some tiny bit of comfort as I drove home from the pediatrician. I may have to rip tissue out of my sweet daughter’s hand, but at least I’m not pulling a worm from her butt.

That night, as I placed regular gauze on her hand I couldn’t help but shed a few tears. My dear girl had been so brave, so long-suffering and upbeat through this whole ordeal and still had a ways to go. I was so proud of her. How could I possibly inflict more pain on her?

Happily, this gauze treatment has been relatively smooth sailing. We have to get pretty creative with ways to get her hand wet, since she still doesn’t like doing that, but she has tolerated the bandage changing like a true gem and it looks like we’re making progress. Hopefully a couple more weeks and everything will be back to normal.

So, let’s recap what we’ve learned here:

1. Treadmills and young children do not mix. AT ALL.

2. Don’t put regular gauze on an open and oozing wound immediately after it happening unless you want to make the situation 100 times worse.

3. Dora The Explorer band-aids, in fact, DO make the owie feel a little better. So do popsicles.

4. Being a kid is tough. Being a parent is tough. But we’re all stronger than we think we are.

As for the good news…well, this post is long enough, don’t you think? That will have to wait for another day

It’s all in the wrist

Rachel — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:51:08 +0000

A few months ago I discovered a new workout program that I loved. It was challenging, it was interesting, I could do it at home, and I was seeing results! At last! An exercise routine I loved! Only there was one problem: after a couple of months I started noticing this weird pain in my wrist and hand. The exercises are kind of a bootcamp-style routine, so I was regularly doing push-ups and other weight-bearing exercises on my hands.

I kind of worked through the pain for a bit, thinking I had just tweaked my wrist and that it would heal in a few days. It wasn’t getting better, so I figured I should rest my hand and wrist for a while and start back up in a week or two. Right around that same time, we were running around the house with the toddler, just being silly, and I happened to accidentally run right into my husband with my right hand extended, jamming my wrist. Oh, it was excruciating! The whole next day every single little movement hurt. Typing, writing, eating, driving, dressing, lifting…I couldn’t do any of it. Even without use, the whole area would throb with pain. Being right-handed, this seriously got in the way of things.

I started icing my wrist, hoping that this weird injury would go away. Luckily the pain subsided a bit, but daily activities continued to hurt. I couldn’t put ANY weight on that hand unless I made a fist in order to keep my wrist straight. Little things like chopping vegetables or doing my hair were unpleasant to say the least. (So I just don’t do them! Ha!)

I came to the conclusion that after 10 years of working on the computer I had finally developed Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Not the end of the world, obviously; there are much worse ailments. But a nuisance. I promised my family that if things didn’t start to feel better by April that I would see a doctor. Naturally, my over-active imagination began to spiral out of control in the following weeks. What if the pain becomes so bad I can’t use my right hand ever again? What if it is arthritis that is slowly spreading through my body, leaving me in a wheelchair by the time I’m 50? What if this is a beginning sign of MS? What if it’s bone cancer? What if…what if….?

Sure enough, over 6 weeks went by and no improvement was made, so I visited a hand and arm specialist. Within a minute of describing my pain and feeling the joints he knew what it was.

“Does this hurt right here?”, he asked, pressing his thumb firmly on the top and center part of my wrist and sending shooting pains through my hand and arm and causing me to momentarily go a bit cross-eyed.

The problem, he said, is not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, but a ganglion cyst growing within the joint and putting pressure on the nerves. Nothing dangerous and potentially fixable, but a bit inconvenient.

(FYI- don’t do a Google Image search for ganglion cysts if you are squeamish. Hoo boy! You’re welcome.)

Ganglion cysts are not necessarily uncommon and can present in a variety of ways. You can’t really see mine as mine apparently is smaller and located deeper within the wrist, but those also tend to be more painful.

The doctor injected it with a cortisone shot (ouch!) and told me to give it a month. If it isn’t better in a few weeks, come back for another one. If those don’t work, they can try to aspirate it (drain the fluid) or remove it surgically. However, there is always the risk of the cyst returning later on.

One other method of removal that I read about online is to whack it as hard as you can with a heavy book, rupturing the lining and therefore getting rid of it (until it grows back…). Um, hello? NO.

I also learned that I have what are called “lax joints”, and that my wrists and fingers are hypermobile, or in other words, they have an extended range of motion. The doctor was quite rushed (I waited for an hour in the waiting room) so I wasn’t able to ask him much about it, but he mentioned that things like push-ups are bad for a person with joints like I have. I did some research online and learned about a syndrome called Joint Hypermobility Syndrome that has a crazy array of symptoms, some of them can be very serious (spontaneous rupture of the heart or lungs, anyone?), but it seems like there could be varying degrees of the severity of the symptoms. Anyhoo, if I do indeed have this syndrome, it would explain a LOT over the years. Ever since I was a kid I have seen doctors for ankle, knee, hip, back, fatigue and headache problems and never received any answers. I’ve always felt like I had an “old” body and just dealt with the pain, and often ascribed it to the fact that I danced competitively and was always very active. I’ll have to dive into it all a little more and maybe consult with the doctor again, but it’s almost like a weight off my shoulders to know why. There isn’t much that can be done about it all, but it’s kind of nice to know it isn’t all in my head or that I’m just a big baby, you know?

So. There you have it, whether you wanted to know or not. I’m grateful to have a generally healthy and functional body, and even though this wrist thing isn’t exactly a party, I still consider myself lucky. In the meantime, I have this super-cool accessory to wear:

I have to wear it at night to keep my wrist from being slept-on funny, which kills, and during the day as much as needed to manage pain. You don’t have to tell me, I know it’s way hot. Try not to be jealous

P.S. This is a wretched picture of me that I took a few days ago while chatting with a friend to show her what was up. I feel the need to explain that I had to be at work extra-early that day, hence the hat and bloodshot eyes. But really, let’s face it, it’s not like I really get much fancier for work on days I have more rest.

P.P.S. After sending this pic my friend said of my office ,”It looks like you’re in a closet.” Yes, yes it does.

When it rains, it pours…part 2

Rachel — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:26:12 +0000

So as mentioned before, the week (which is now a little ways past…sorry for the delay), continued to be an adventure. Thursday brought more barfing, but Friday and Saturday seemed to promise some much needed normalcy. We were so optimistic that we actually rented a movie, I know, CRAZY right? Somebody stop us, we might go to bed at 10:30! We put the kid down to sleep and went downstairs to our little home theater to enjoy the show.

Not 45 seconds after starting the movie Claire started crying. The hubby ran upstairs to get her, and I decided to follow in order to assist where needed. Now, let me pause a moment to describe our basement. It’s not particularly large, most of it we recently finished. When you come down the stairs you are met by a door to our unfinished laundry/storage room and then there is a short hallway to our entertainment room. As I was running down the hall to the stairs I noticed a grayish rope sticking out under the laundry room door, which I found extremely odd since I didn’t remember us having a gray rope.

I stopped dead in my tracks. We don’t have a gray rope. We especially don’t have a gray rope with scales.

My heart started pounding and I raced up to the baby’s room where the hubby was trying to console her.

With a shaking voice I said, “You need to come downstairs right now…we have a SNAKE in our basement!”

The hubby’s face went white and all three of us raced back downstairs to see that the SNAKE (shudder!) had fully revealed itself and was just chillin’ in our hallway.

We were paralyzed. Never in my entire life have I had any type of reptile in my home. I never really thought I was afraid of snakes, until I saw one in my home. Hubby hates snakes with a passion. Not quite as much as he hates mice and rats, but snakes are right up there for him. We just stood on the steps, mouths agape, and wondered what on earth we were supposed to do next. We couldn’t kill it with a shovel, blood would get all over the carpet. That meant we had to catch it. Ugh!

We took turns watching the snake and running around the house to find something to put it in, however, while it was on my watch it got tired of hanging out in the hallway and quickly slithered back under the laundry room door and into the mess of the storage room, all while I stood there screeching and clutching at the baby.

We couldn’t find it in the storage room. It really seems to have disappeared into some small hiding space, and we’re too afraid to go poking around with much gusto. We created an entire fortress around the base of the door in an attempt to keep it from escaping and prayed that it would go out the way it came in (which is a mystery to us, since we have no idea how it got in). My brave sisters came over the next day and poked around, but we couldn’t find anything.

So now we still have a snake in our basement. It’s been almost 2 weeks. Doing laundry is a two man job as one person has to stand guard as the other throws clothes around as fast as humanly possible. The sucky thing about snakes is there is no real easy way to get rid of them. You have to either catch it or kill it. There’s no such thing as snake traps or snake poison. Yuck yuck yuck! Someone pointed out that at least we won’t have mice in our basement. Yeah, way to see the bright side…we don’t have mice, we just have a 20 inch long SNAKE! No biggie! The person who pointed that out is apparently some sort of snake enthusiast and said that it’s no big deal, we just have to hope that it isn’t a female that is going to give birth to a whole LITTER of snakes IN OUR HOUSE! Yeah, no big deal.

Hang on for a second while I hyperventilate.

So, there you have it. Snake in the house, mystery to where it has gone. Possible infestation of baby snakes on the horizon.

So how are your holidays shaping up?