Letters to you

Two handed typing - Up to about 60 wpm now - not up to speed because I still have the split loosely in place to allow wrist to rest on wrist-shaped surface at all times.

Able to oppose index & middle finger to thumb now. (before could not oppose middle finger). Thumb opposing the ring and pinky, still working on - moving to the stress point but not beyond. Nice to know the average rat has better opposing ability than I do... Edit: I was able to oppose the ring finger today (July 3).

Ability to lift with left hand. Tested by lifting a coffee cup full of coffee so I could open door with right hand. Success - no pain, huzzah.

Discoloration and swelling - still there but fading.

Ability to bend fingers - still stiff - need PT

Ability to make fist - not good - need time, PT

Ability to grasp - fairly good, oddly enough. Need time, PT to get up to snuff.

Ability to move thumb to "thumbs up" position - not good, need PT and time - one of the bones that governs that was broken.

The future -- Not happy until I resolve a few things.

Usual line of treatment for people in my demographic - Biophosphonates. I was tested last year and told my bone density was low and was told to take a biophosphonate called Fosamax. Refused due to particularly gruesome side effects, and also due to the fact that my father experienced some of those side effects when he took it.

Would Fosamax have prevented this fracture? I don't know, but I doubt it. Not how I fell on it and given the tiny radius of my wrist. The new wrist now looks like a normal wrist. My right one looks like a small kid's wrist.

If it had broken while taking Fosamax, the Fosamax would have impeded healing. This is how it works: It prevents old bone re-absorption and new bone growth while it adds mineral substance to existing bone. Thus the bones become dense but brittle and non-regenerative. That would be rather bad in the current situation.

Alternative medicine route: http://www.algaecal.com
Real or quacks? Again, I don't know. People have reported good results.

Further uneasy questions: Why did I fall? Tripped? (that's how my brain parsed it at the time) All my life (from childhood) I've taken these weird spills occasionally. I'll be walking along and suddenly I'll fall. Does my foot catch on something? Does my ankle give out (many sprains as a kid)? A weird muscle/nerve glitch? Bad shoes? I never fell or sprained an ankle as long as I wore my high-top ren shoes, though. Maybe I'll go back to wearing those all the time for good weather and high-top boots in bad weather.

I wonder what the truth is in this mess:

Several fibromyalgia and seizure medications (one being Lyrica) have been linked with increased suicidal thoughts and actions.

Some of the sites that talk about the suicide/Lyrica link belong to lawyers.

Some of the sites that promote Lyrica as something beneficial belong to Pfizer.

In the event that there is a link between these types of meds and suicide:

I wonder why the same drugs that soothe the areas of the central nervous system affected by fibromyalgia (Lyrica), epilepsy (Neurontin), and nicotine withdrawal (Chantix) can allegedly lead to suicidal thoughts and actions. Existing epilepsy drugs often include suicide warnings on the labels as a matter of standard policy, so this is not something previously unheard of. Do all these things affect the same part of the CNS? If Lyrica helps with CNS pain, maybe there's an area of the brain being numbed or suppressed (the same one that's affected by Chantix and Neurontin)?

The answer would depend upon how each of these medications works.

According to http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/medicines/100005038.html:
( how does it work? )

So that's how Lyrica works (and it's also used for anxiety and epilepsy).

Let me think about that for a second. It acts like GABA, but it really isn't GABA. It is kind of like kitten milk replacement formula in that respect. You can feed a kitten with an eyedropper and keep it alive, but not offer it the warmth and comfort of a mother cat's fur

Maybe after a while the body knows. You may not know yourself, but the body knows that it's not the real thing. GABA might be a lot more complex than pregabalin. The electrical impulses may be stabilized but something very deep is not getting fed.

Going into the metaphysical realm with this, the feel is hollow, "not there". Kind of like a cardboard box, a placeholder, without the actual contents of the box being inside of it. A Christmas card without a sender. The system can be tricked for a while, but eventually may catch on that something is missing.

So many factors, variables, interactions, involved in a living system. Hard to replace any element of it and not affect the whole thing.

My mom has had macular degeneration for a while, meaning the central vision is deteriorating due to weakening and bursting of blood vessels on the retina and subsequent pooling of fluid in the eye. She's been eating a lot of vitmin A-laden yellow and green vegetables and taking leutine, and it had stabilized for a while, but one eye recently got worse. She decided to try a treatment recommended by her doctor. We weighed the side effects and she decided that she wanted to go through with it, since the alternative was to lose vision in that eye. She had the first injection last week. There were no side effects so far (it's an ongoing treatment) and her vision in that eye has cleared up. I hope in the long term that there continue to be no side effects. I'm glad that she's able to see better. The fracture she got when she fell earlier this year is all mended - she can raise her arm over her head a lot more than anyone predicted, and since going off the bad medications has gone back to exercising every day. If an 89-year-old person can do her exercises, so can I...

A few days ago, our new set of three Gabrielle Roth DVDs arrived (The Wave, Inner Wave, and Power Wave). We had a couple of her CDs and books (rialian has always liked her) but we never knew about the DVDs until a friend showed them to us (thanks!) So... we've been doing her dance meditations for a couple of days now. The main benefit of these DVDs is that they are a great excuse to move around (should someone need an excuse). Motion is a prerequisite to all sorts of good things like relaxing sore muscles, weight loss, health, longevity, etc.