Lucy Lime

It is not just because we went to middle and high schools together.

It is not because she is a nurse who has put up with me bouncing several medical questions off of her. (I know, I know. It is totally not cool to bug your friends for med advice when they are off duty BUT it keeps me from going to a doctor. I have little faith in the profession but tons of trust in her, specifically.)

It is not because we are related. Well, not legally but we were cousins by marriage. And we are still kinda-cousins because my ex and I are still related in our own little weird way. So there.

The real reason I love her is because she totally figured out what is wrong with me. Yeah, stop laughing. It was nothing mental. Jerks. It is a bona fide DISEASE. Well, an injury at the very least. We were emailing one day and I told her of this horrible pain that had been going on with my arms. No matter what I did, nothing helped. Previous doctors told me it was a sprained muscle or I had hit my funny bone. Or, at the very worst, the carpal tunnel from my wrists was traveling up my arms. Well, Not-a-Dr. Jassie pinpointed it to a type of pregnancy/baby-related tendonitis. Only it had a French name she could not remember. I have been on the lookout ever since.

I recently found a passage in Judith Newman’s You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman: The Diary of a New Mother that completely hit the spot:

August 16, 2002: Yesterday I went to a hand surgeon to find out why I’ve been in pain for months. I figured it was probably a ganglion cyst and I’d need to have it removed. Either that or it was some sort of repetitive stress injury. The surgeon moved my hand back and forth. “Do you have a baby?” he asked. As it turns out, there’s a particular kind of tendonitis (DeQuervain’s) that women get from babies — something about the way we hook our thumbs under their arms when we lift them.” (178-9)

What Judith does not mention is that this lifting action is not the only contributor. Our physiology makes the muscles and the tendons in our arms easier to stress out than that of our male counterparts, which is why this is a chick thing. Hormones left over from pregnancy add to this. You know, that relaxin stuff? Furthermore, the hormones still thriving in my body from nursing my son are showing their ugly side by contributing to this.

I only caught this passage thanks to that thought Jassie planted in my head.