Pain Relievers

We're pretty good these days at alleviating pain and discomfort. Currently, I am taking ibuprofen to ease the pain in my right thumb from a condition called Trigger Finger, so named because when I bend my thumb, tendon catches, pulls, and with an audible pop, tendon springs from its sheath. At some point, hopefully this year, because, as my husband pointed out this morning, we have met our out-of-pocket deductible, I will have to have a "procedure." The doctor assures me this will fix the problem.

 

But I wonder. My hands already bear the scars of other stories: a skin graft from burning oil, which the nurse told me is the most common burn for women, a triangle of ropy skin where the oil spilled back as I tried to put out the fire; 1/2 of a missing joint on the ring finger of the same hand, an industrial accident when I spent a summer working in a plastics factory; a moon-shaped scar from a knife that slipped while I was cutting a pan of cookies into squares. Given that I have bitten my nails since I was six, and that I am also, while I write this post, wearing a brace on my left hand for carpal tunnel, I would say that my hands have born the brunt of pain in my life.

Perhaps this why I write a line from Susan Vreeland inside the cover of each new journal: Even a scarred hand can bring forth greatness. It is a line from her novel The Passion of Artemesia, about a woman painter in the time of Michaelangelo. A priest tied Artemesia's hands with rope and squeezed them until all the bones broke, as punishment for adultery with a man (who, as you have probably already guessed, raped her). Artemsia continued to paint despite the constant pain in her hands.

 

I have found that while surgery relieves the pain of injury or stress, each scar brings a new form of discomfort that never recedes. If you are ever around when I bump my hand on the edge of a table or countertop, my reaction might seem extravagant. And if I have my trigger thumb repaired, it is likely that the condition will pop up in another finger. But what would I do without my hands? All the work I enjoy and am called to do requires the use of my fingers and hands. I have, as of today, copied 100 pages of Anna Karenina. I sew, knit and embroider. I gather eggs from my chickens. In the summer, I pick pounds of blueberries to freeze for the winter. On my walks, I watch the squirrels, and notice bits of shell and nut fall to the ground. What would a squirrel do without its paws? It could not survive. How lucky I am, I think, to be able to repair the damage to mine.

 

This past week, I worked at my parents' house, helping to clear out the garage of old furniture and wood. Once, while supervising the burn barrel in the backyard, I reached out to push a piece of wood down into the fire. The pain in my thumb was so sharp that I pulled back as if the flames emanated from inside my own bones. When I asked my mom if she had any pain relievers, she told me that my sister had taken the last two the night before. There was no way to get more; the driveway was filled with the vans and trucks of shoppers at the moving sale. I had no choice but to keep working. And so I did. I worked until about noon, drove home, and spent the weekend weatherizing windows. I painted the walls in the new space where I hope to sell my artwork. Now the pain is a constant ache. And I will call the doctor as soon as I finish this post. The doctor will make an appointment for me to return in a week or so, at which time he will make a small incision and go in and cut the sheath, allowing the tendon to move back and forward with ease. And until then, I will continue to work, and write, with pain. Because the alternative, to do nothing, in no less pain free.

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