Ok. We are 14 days out from The Accident. Overall, DH has been amazing. His outlook and optimism beat anything I ever imagined. His hand has given him very little pain. On occasion, he will bump it or move it in a way it doesn't like, and he will have about 45 seconds of excrutiating pain. HOW do you spell, "excrutiating"? Hold on -- I've got to look that up....
ex·cru·ci·ate ( P ) Pronunciation Key (k-skrsh-t)tr.v. ex·cru·ci·at·ed, ex·cru·ci·at·ing, ex·cru·ci·ates
To inflict severe pain on; torture.
To inflict great mental distress on.
OK. I didn't think that looked right~!
Anyhoo, overall, he has had great luck with this thing not being too painful, or too constantly painful.
I had worried about depression setting in because, well, because it's my job to worry about things. I think I read somewhere it's normal to grieve when you lose some part of your body, or if I didn't read it, then I made it up and came to believe I had read it. So I have been on my toes watching for any signs of depression.
Monday was Day 12 and It Was A Bad Day. DH was slept quite badly, reliving The Accident over and over in his mind. He couldn't put it out of his mind to get some rest. So on Monday morning, he was exhausted, and to make matters worse, his hand was uncharacteristically painful. To his credit, he tried so many tactics to feel better. He suited up and took a 3 mile run-walk. He spent an hour on the piano. He EVEN .....shared his feelings with me. Nothing seemed to help. I wondered if there is some normal timeframe at which all the adrenalin has receded, all the drugs are out of your system, all the tissue is finally trying to snap into place, and the mind just ... plummets.
I was considering our options, thinking of tactics to combat it, when, bing! He woke up on Tuesday feeling much, much better. Ironically enough, I had spent Monday night reliving it. The most upsetting scenes would flash, strobe style, through my brain, and I was helpless to make the slide show stop. Deep breathing didn't help. Going to another place (mentally) didn't help. Getting up and going on the internet didn't help. On Tuesday I was as crabby as he was on Monday -- with one exception. I had no physical pain and have not lost a finger. It was much easier for me to get over one night of poor sleep than it will be for him to adjust to this change in his life.
We were enlightened yesterday at our visit to Physical Therapy. He has been working too hard at his recovery. He is so motivated to play guitar again that he has done all the exercises to excess, and this is why he has had so much more pain of late. As the PT said, "I almost never have to tell my patients this: 'Back off.'" We both actually breathed a sigh of relief. Ok.
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