#31 for 21: Thumbs

This is one video that Elise will never have to watch.  It is innate.  I don't know how she knows, but she has a wider base than any kid I know.

She is exceedingly defensive.  She has never willingly let us wash her in the bath.  She has never willingly let a doctor examine her.  She may or may not come willingly from a store.  And if she doesn't want you to, it will take all of your 37 years worth of strength and skills to get her to do it.

If you don't have 50 lbs on her and she locks down, you are not going to be able to physically manipulate her.

This goes back to the good old days when she was on chemo and STEROIDS when she was a whopping 18 pounds. 

Back then the nurse practitioner wanted her to take Tums.  For calcium.  Let me remind you exactly how many medicines she was on.  A BUNCH.  Most were liquid.  They all involved me sitting on her to administer or giving them to her by her main line port.  And they were all important to her survival, except the Tums.

When I would attempt to give it to her, she would buck and scream.  And so I did what any good mother would do, I smashed it into a powder and hid it in her food.  And she started boycotting food, just in case it was where I hid the Tums.  NOW.  At 2 years old and 18 pounds, this is not safe or reasonable option.  The nurse practitioner got upset at me because I told them I wasn't going to push the issue.  The floor nurses saw me sitting on her while she screamed and gargled and bucked and spit and bit, and backed me up.  The exact words from the nurse practitioner were "She's not that big.  I don't see why her mother doesn't just make her take it."  One of my favorite nurses, told me that she told her "Then you make her, I've seen it.  You aren't going to win."  But rather than listen to actual people who dealt with Elise, she kept prescribing it.  So, I started taking the daily Tums to shut her up.  I probably needed them prophylactically for anxiety anyhow...

Why do I tell you this story?  To drive home a point.  She doesn't do "backing down". 

She has bowed up several times lately and refused to go to bed or leave the library or leave CVS.  This involves her running or fighting my hold on her wrist.

I think she has broken my thumb.  I have had increasing soreness daily.  But interestingly, on Monday, I picked up a bag and slid it from my palm to my shoulder and it almost dropped me like a Vulcan Nerve Pinch.

I broke my thumb sledding when I was in college, and it feels remarkably the same.  I am of two minds about going to the doctor...it's my right hand...and I need it very much.  And braced, it will do me almost no good.  On the other hand (ha ha, pun intended!), if I don't get it to heal, it's not going to be doing me any good anyway...

In similar news, my long term back pain has escalated to spasms, and I am going to my general practitioner.  BUT so I don't look like a drug seeker, I got Elise's pediatrician to write me a note, validating my situation. 

Do you hear the irony here?  I have to have a doctor's note to go to the doctor. 

My life is so weird.