I went to Disney World a few weeks ago and had to share a picture with the world (or my 150 instagram followers) of the awesome Mickey Manicure I gave myself. That’s right, I willingly shared a picture of my hands to everyone. Those nails took 2 hours of my life that I’ll never get back, but worth it, I guess?
Anyway I thought now would be a good time to share what’s going on with my hands. About a year ago someone from Dr. R’s office called and had me answer a rather long survey about the impact the surgery had before and after on my life. Not sure what the research resulted it, but I was happy to help. It’d been a while since I thought about Dr. R and my surgery, which is great.
For the most part I don’t think about my hand surgery anymore and I’ve just gotten used to the scars. I talked with my dermatologist about them once and she said she could use fillers to help temporarily and that might be something I do at some point, maybe if I ever get engaged and I’m feeling vain? Depends on cost I guess. My hands feel great and I have total mobility of that finger. Every once in a while I’ll feel a weird twang when I’m doing a big stretch in yoga and I’ve had a mild ache in my hand around that area on occasion but I can’t remember the last time, because it’s super infrequent, maybe a change in weather thing? My grip strength isn’t great, but it never was. My PT would probably laugh at me if she were to measure it again. But I’m able to do everything I like to do: bike, play golf, draw, lift weights, well I don’t really like that last one but I try to do it.
The one thing I do think about some times is how lucky I was to be in a situation where I was able to have the surgery I wanted. At the time I had good health insurance with my job as well as short term disability (even if it was a pain to prove I qualified) and with the help of my parents I was able to have the surgery without it being a large financial burden. Since then I’ve switched jobs and even been without a job for a while. Last year I bounced back and forth between insurance offered through the exchange and various employer provided plans because I switched jobs twice. It was super annoying. I was appreciative to have the option to sign up for the exchange so that I was covered if anything disastrous happened. But with five different insurance plans it made it impossible for me to ever reach my high deductibles and I ended up paying a lot out of pocket for something I had to get done. It made me really wish for a single payer option.