Its been two months’.
I have a bent thumb on my right hand that came on in September. I have been in so much pain that I haven’t felt anytime in my life. Days of pain that were unrelenting. Early in September, my husband returned to Doha to get his clearances done. I remember driving to the Kochi airport to drop him at the now derelict airport. There was this special one taking off that day from the airport.
I returned home in two hours ( we live about two hours from the place of the International Airport). I cannot remember how soon after that my pain started. And it happened so slowly that I didn’t realise until the pain caught up with me and I could not light the gas burner. I lost the power of my right thumb. I cannot remember if something cracked on my bones but I am left with a bent thumb now. There is a contracture there.
I thought it was a remnant of the cat bite on my palm from July as the bite was severe enough to have damaged my tendons though the tendons had healed well. It was only last week that when my husband took me to an orthoped cousin that an X-ray that he ordered showed that I have degenerative changes in my thumb joints.
Oh my God ! Degenerative changes? In my head, even 51 birthdays had not convinced me that I was on the other side of the half century. Age had finally caught up and my first reaction was sadness. It never struck me that I could have osteoarthritis. How the proud have fallen! That was how my thoughts went. IT took me more than a week to get rid of my depression. I have always thought that I would remain young for as long as I lived. I needed humility and boy, was I humbled.
And then the pain started in all my fingers, both in my right and left hands. And then pain in my right shoulder started. I could not almost use my entire right hand.
More depression followed. And that’s why I haven’t been writing.
Susie Shy 45 