It Is What It Is

You know how life throws you a curveball? Here I had all these amazing plans to clean house and make everything shiny new for the New Year. Guess I'll be putting that off until Chinese New Year because of "the arm".

I'm not sure if I've blogged about my right arm before. Maybe so. I know I posted it on facebook. To recap, I've got this weird bone issue stemming from an unresolved case of nursemaid's elbow when I was 4 or 5 years old. Basically, the radial head on my right arm was dislocated and never got popped back where it belonged, so Hey!, now it's grown really misshapen and out of joint.

As my ortho has said, I'm a survivor. I've made do with what I've got and adapted to the situation as best as I can. However, I'm inching closer to 40 every year and the older I get, the worse the pain gets. The pain I had as a kid was NOTHING compared to what it has been like the last 24 hours or so. The surgeon has had me on a ten pound weight limit for almost a year and I'm relapsing.

To give you an idea of why the arm is the way it is, here's a picture:

Right Radial Head Dislocation, 2009, ~32 years post trauma

Basically, there's no elbow joint. There's just skin/muscle holding the joint in place. FUN! Except when it isn't. Now, I'm not crying in my beer. Or milk or whatever beverage of choice. To quote Johnny Magic, "it is what it is". But when the pain gets severe, the only thing that helps is high doses of narcotics and complete rest. Which would be fine and dandy if I weren't 75% right-handed and the kids are home on vacation until January 10th. not that I'm counting. How many days is that anyway?

The LAST time this happened, I fractured my left thumb overcompensating for not being able to use my right arm because it was in a sling. And that left thumb? It STILL hasn't healed completely. I've been to see the ortho so many times in the last 9 months that I've got a "frequent shopper" card.So here I am propped up in bed with the laptop while the kids make themselves Nutella sandwiches and watch Dinosaur Train, Fairly Odd Parents and National Geographic documentaries on Netflix. I better order them another pizza for lunch. At least that has vegetables on it.