Thursday, September 23, 2010.
It's been 4 days since I ruined my thumb on the cat food can lid. Sutures are due to come out in 4 more days. I have nerve damage and zero gripping strength. The other 4 fingers are fine, and the thumb WANTS to help but fails, just sort of flops around. They covered my shifts at work, so I could just lay around and discover all the things I can't do without my left hand:
My normal hairdo is a mess of spiked clumps (because nobody can tell if it's intentional or not), requires a styling product named "Got2BGlued". Requires 2 hands to smear it in and spike it.
Crocheting is out.
Lighting the stove in our RV. Need two thumbs to work the lighter thing AND turn the stove knob.
Socks. Bra hooks. Flossing. Panties. Jeans! The button-zipper-thing. Opening potato chip bags. Opening anything.
Sorry. I've been wallowing in my own pity party for 4 days. Also, recently have had something go awry with my right eye, presumably optic nerve damage from my Ramsay-Hunt-Syndrome. Went to eye doctor and my new prescription glasses are due in Friday. Sure hope it helps, I have problems reading, watching TV, and driving, all of which necessitate closing my right eye. I now qualify for Handicap parking, though...
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Look what I did!
Sunday morning, 3 AM (I told you I wake up early) my cat began his usual crying to be fed. Even before I started the coffee, I got out a can of cat food and pulled the tab to open it. It was sort of stiff, and my arthritic hands fumbled it, and VOILA! The edge of the lid sliced into my left thumb down to the bone, a neat 3 corner flap.
So much blood! Squirting, running, dripping, and so painful! Took me about 40 minutes to stop the bleeding with firm pressure and 1/2 a roll of paper towels. With the cat yowling the whole time, because he knew there was a can of food up there and didn't get fed yet.
I wrapped it tightly and waited for Ron to wake up. Even the slightest movement of the thumb joint sent burning zingers of pain up my arm: I knew some nerves at least had gotten cut. It amazed me how helpless I was with only one hand. Takes a lot longer to make coffee one-handed, and when I had to pee, it took forever to get my PJ pants back up.
After Ron got up, we debated how best to get my thumb tended to on a Sunday. I thought I'd have to go to the VA in Minneapolis, as the local ER's and Urgent Cares always cost an arm and a leg. I found a phone number for my St. Cloud VA Nurse triage line, said it's available 24/7, so I called it. Had to hold 25 minutes, but she answered and said the VA Clinic in St. Cloud would see me as soon as I got there! I told her the web site says they're closed on Sunday. She replied, "Yes, we don't tell anyone they're there."
Didn't get home til 4 PM. 4 sutures, very deep, and it DID cut nerves, but the doctor who sewed it up said he thought the tendons were intact. Plus a tetanus shot, so the other arm hurts, too.
So the thumb doesn't work very well. Zero gripping strength, still very painful. I have to call work today and find out if I'm able to do the job, which requires a couple hundred handwashings and glove changes daily, not to mention being able to pull a cap off a needle, or insert a spike in a bag: things I have trouble with WITHOUT this owie. Oy.Monday, September 6, 2010
The Onion Cutter
MPR has a story today about how summer jobs shape your future. I wanted to share how MY summer job history has impacted my life, as I believe a wide variety of summer jobs are necessary to discover what you DON'T want to do the rest of your life.
My first job was Dairy Queen, at 15 years old and 85 cents/hr, slightly higher than the 50 cents/hr that babysitting paid. They let us eat free, anything we wanted, and to this day I can't eat that stuff. I learned Customer Service there, apparently a lost art now, and that busloads of Little Leaguers wanting root beer floats are bad. They take a long time to make, because you have to wait for the foam to subside. I served pro wrestlers Mad Dog Vachon and Vern Gagne. Mad Dog had a normal, even high voice. And I learned for the first time about pain, when I walked out of the back room with my arms piled high with hamburger buns. Someone had just changed the french fry oil and left the vat sitting in the middle of the floor, where I knocked it over. It splashed my (pantyhose-clad) legs. While waiting for the ambulance, I tried to pull up my wrinkled pantyhose, but it was my skin that was puddled around my ankles. The pantyhose was fused to it. So I got to learn about burn units, the daily bath where they debride the dead stuff, morphine, and grafting. To this day, I have the lowest pain tolerance of anyone I know.
Once healed, I answered an ad to "Prepare Produce" for Burger King. Heck, I can do that, I thought! Turned out I chopped onions for 8 hours a day. Paid $2.50/hour, a fortune! Occasionally we got lettuce to do, some of which was sort of liquidy, but mostly onions. And I didn't really chop the onions, I cored and peeled them and threw them in the chopper. Speed was imperative After the first two hours, I've never cried again when cutting onions. It required two shampoos to get the smell out of my hair and skin, despite the protective garments. Once I had a photo shoot after work for the Miss Robbinsdale Pageant. As there wouldn't be time for two showers after work, I wore rollers all day, swathed with saran wrap and a turban. It didn't work, the photographer's eyes were streaming. I learned that summer about Trucker Humor (truckers in and out all day loading deliveries for Burger Kings) and about good music. We had the radio on LOUD, and to this day whenever I hear "Lay Lady Lay", I smell onions. But I don't eat at Burger King: memories of that liquidy lettuce...
My next job came courtesy of my Dad. He managed Kinney Shoes in Robbinsdale, and said I could work on commission. Selling shoes taught me to listen to what the customers want, and then sell them something they didn't know they wanted. It paid LOTS better than Dairy Queen, even more than Burger King, and I developed a love for shoes that's ridiculous, per my husband. At 16 years old, I was finally permitted to wear something besides saddle shoes, thus my salary went mostly for shoes. (Still does!) And I would return to work at Kinney's whenever I needed to, all through high school.
But in an attempt to cut the apron strings and get a job sans nepotism, I then worked at JC Penny's Brookdale as a Float, any department that was short-handed. My favorite was Fabric, where I got to sew all day. I assembled a lot of bicycles during the holidays. I hated Infants Wear, but loved Hardware, lots of men there! I also liked Gift Wrap, and quite often they used me in Shoes, said I was a natural...
While I was in nursing school, I worked as a nurse's aide at Crystal Lake Nursing Home. I loved those gentle old souls. THE major job focus was preventing bedsores: turning, padding, activity, movement. Most of the job was drudgery involving excreta, but there were highlights. Staff wheelchair races, where I broke my ankle during a crash. The bat in the dining room, and me with a trash bag on my head swinging a tennis racket. One Thanksgiving, I watched one sad woman all dressed up in the lobby waiting for her daughter who never showed up. She only lived there because she was incontinent, she didn't even have dementia. I took her home with me to Mom's for Thanksgiving dinner, where she described the Pearl Harbor attack in vivid detail (she was a nurse there), then peed on the dining room chair. I developed a monumental enduring love for the elderly: what they've seen and experienced, what they know. And learned how to raise children so they'll want to come get you on Thanksgiving.
My dad's quotes are a firm part of my family lore. There's no forgetting the Romantic Restaurant Indictment "It's so dark in here you can't tell if you're eating rats or roaches." The Over Eater's Creed "Waste Not, Want Not", or the one that taught me to choose my battles: "What's it gonna matter in a hundred years?" But the JOB one has had the most impact:
"Your life work should be the one career that makes you feel LUCKY to get to do that all day the rest of your life."
No, I never found that career, but have maybe ingrained that nugget in my son, who's close to finishing his Master's in digging-up-really-old-but-cool-stuff. How lucky is that!
My first job was Dairy Queen, at 15 years old and 85 cents/hr, slightly higher than the 50 cents/hr that babysitting paid. They let us eat free, anything we wanted, and to this day I can't eat that stuff. I learned Customer Service there, apparently a lost art now, and that busloads of Little Leaguers wanting root beer floats are bad. They take a long time to make, because you have to wait for the foam to subside. I served pro wrestlers Mad Dog Vachon and Vern Gagne. Mad Dog had a normal, even high voice. And I learned for the first time about pain, when I walked out of the back room with my arms piled high with hamburger buns. Someone had just changed the french fry oil and left the vat sitting in the middle of the floor, where I knocked it over. It splashed my (pantyhose-clad) legs. While waiting for the ambulance, I tried to pull up my wrinkled pantyhose, but it was my skin that was puddled around my ankles. The pantyhose was fused to it. So I got to learn about burn units, the daily bath where they debride the dead stuff, morphine, and grafting. To this day, I have the lowest pain tolerance of anyone I know.
Once healed, I answered an ad to "Prepare Produce" for Burger King. Heck, I can do that, I thought! Turned out I chopped onions for 8 hours a day. Paid $2.50/hour, a fortune! Occasionally we got lettuce to do, some of which was sort of liquidy, but mostly onions. And I didn't really chop the onions, I cored and peeled them and threw them in the chopper. Speed was imperative After the first two hours, I've never cried again when cutting onions. It required two shampoos to get the smell out of my hair and skin, despite the protective garments. Once I had a photo shoot after work for the Miss Robbinsdale Pageant. As there wouldn't be time for two showers after work, I wore rollers all day, swathed with saran wrap and a turban. It didn't work, the photographer's eyes were streaming. I learned that summer about Trucker Humor (truckers in and out all day loading deliveries for Burger Kings) and about good music. We had the radio on LOUD, and to this day whenever I hear "Lay Lady Lay", I smell onions. But I don't eat at Burger King: memories of that liquidy lettuce...
My next job came courtesy of my Dad. He managed Kinney Shoes in Robbinsdale, and said I could work on commission. Selling shoes taught me to listen to what the customers want, and then sell them something they didn't know they wanted. It paid LOTS better than Dairy Queen, even more than Burger King, and I developed a love for shoes that's ridiculous, per my husband. At 16 years old, I was finally permitted to wear something besides saddle shoes, thus my salary went mostly for shoes. (Still does!) And I would return to work at Kinney's whenever I needed to, all through high school.
 |
| Jim Frame |
But in an attempt to cut the apron strings and get a job sans nepotism, I then worked at JC Penny's Brookdale as a Float, any department that was short-handed. My favorite was Fabric, where I got to sew all day. I assembled a lot of bicycles during the holidays. I hated Infants Wear, but loved Hardware, lots of men there! I also liked Gift Wrap, and quite often they used me in Shoes, said I was a natural...
While I was in nursing school, I worked as a nurse's aide at Crystal Lake Nursing Home. I loved those gentle old souls. THE major job focus was preventing bedsores: turning, padding, activity, movement. Most of the job was drudgery involving excreta, but there were highlights. Staff wheelchair races, where I broke my ankle during a crash. The bat in the dining room, and me with a trash bag on my head swinging a tennis racket. One Thanksgiving, I watched one sad woman all dressed up in the lobby waiting for her daughter who never showed up. She only lived there because she was incontinent, she didn't even have dementia. I took her home with me to Mom's for Thanksgiving dinner, where she described the Pearl Harbor attack in vivid detail (she was a nurse there), then peed on the dining room chair. I developed a monumental enduring love for the elderly: what they've seen and experienced, what they know. And learned how to raise children so they'll want to come get you on Thanksgiving.
My dad's quotes are a firm part of my family lore. There's no forgetting the Romantic Restaurant Indictment "It's so dark in here you can't tell if you're eating rats or roaches." The Over Eater's Creed "Waste Not, Want Not", or the one that taught me to choose my battles: "What's it gonna matter in a hundred years?" But the JOB one has had the most impact:
"Your life work should be the one career that makes you feel LUCKY to get to do that all day the rest of your life."
No, I never found that career, but have maybe ingrained that nugget in my son, who's close to finishing his Master's in digging-up-really-old-but-cool-stuff. How lucky is that!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)