I'm not sure if I create my own problems or I'm just a target for problems.
I spotted what looked like a blood blister on my finger about four months ago. But I had other things to worry about. My yearly mammogram showed something suspicious and I ended up having a biopsy. Thankfully it was not cancerous.
After that week, I noticed the blister was still on my finger. So I did what a lot of uncivilized people do. I poked it with a needle. A river of blood flowed from it, and my finger swelled up, causing me to wonder if I was going to lose it. I put multiple band-aids on it, and went for the MRI for my long-standing back problem.
Turned out my degenerative joint disease is progressing. I had my yearly blood tests done to test for various things and while discussing the results with my family doctor I asked her what this thing was on my finger. She said leave it alone and put a band-aid on it.
A couple months later I was back in her office and she asked how the finger turned out. I told her that it now looked like it did before I poked it. She asked me how long it had been there, and when I told her she promptly referred me to plastic surgery. I asked her if she couldn't just lance it in the office and find out what's in there. Nope.
So I went to the Plastic Surgery department. Sitting in the waiting room I felt silly that I was there for a little blood blister while there are people with real problems. There were pamphlets on increasing or decreasing the size of various body parts so I found myself guessing who might be getting what done. Then I realized that the others in the waiting room were probably thinking the same thing about me so I tried to hide my face in my Avon book.
Finally I was called in. The surgeon studied it for a while and then sent me to the Ultrasound room. (First he gave me a long lecture about NEVER EVER using a needle-burnt or sterilized on anything suspicious!)
My little blood blister was looked at with the ultrasound, and then she put my finger in a bowl of water and it got another kind of ultrasound. Then the technician called in another doctor and they studied it, all the while my real problem-my back- is killing me from standing in an awkward position holding my finger straight.
I'm sent back to the surgeon who informs me that I am to come back tomorrow and he will "cut" it. I protested mainly because with Fibromyalgia I have a "one trip to town a week" rule due to the exhaustion of driving the 25 miles to town and back. (Those with chronic fatigue will understand) But the doctor convinces me that he has to cut it.
So the next day I was back, thinking finally he will lance it open in his office. Nope. I'm taken to the operating room, given 4 shots of pain killer in my hand-OUCH! I'm laid on a table and the big light is focused on my hand. It takes two people-the doc and a surgical technician to operate on my poor finger and five stitches.
The tiny nodual (that's what they called it) is carefully packed away to be sent to a lab on a distant planet where they do nothing but look at blood blisters. My hand is wrapped up so I look like a civil war veteran and I'm sent home with instructions to not get it wet, not touch the bandage, not do any activity that will get my blood pumping for a week until he can look at it again.
Hello? Doctor, I have an Avon business, a family, I take showers daily, and all kinds of other activities that need two working hands.
So I've spent the last week trying to follow instructions, not successfully. The very next day I held my all-day jewelry sale, and after that I tried carefully to wash my hair with one hand, use a computer with bandages holding my fingers together, and believe me I HAD to change the bandages every couple days.
Being a philosoper-type I've asked myself what is the purpose of this seemingly tiny thing causing so much commotion. Logically, I can think maybe I got a cactus spear in my finger one day when I was moving my plants. Spiritually, I think my father who is now in heaven is whispering to me because he had his finger on the same hand removed many years ago. I think I now have an idea of what he went through on a small scale as he waited to get his own finger removed after injuring it.
Tomorrow I get the stitches out (I think) and hopefully find out that there are no results to speak of from the lab, and maybe return to somewhat normal life of pain and exhaustion.
I feel like a living joke: "How many doctors does it take to diagnose a blood blister?" Too many!
Seriously, if you have two good working hands and all your fingers, thank God for them tonight. You take for granted what you have until you don't have it anymore.
"We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have." ...Frederick Keonig
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