(no subject)

So on Friday I somehow managed to injure my left hand, though of course not in any way that shows because why would my pain actually have some kind of visual component, that might actually convince me that I'm not making it up. I'm not sure what I did to it -- I know it's not the tendonitis, because it's in my hand, not my wrist, and it showed up really suddenly after I did something dumb trying to chop wood (advice: leave it to the person in the family who actually knows how to chop wood). I think it might be some kind of strain? I can't really grip with my left hand and my fine motor skills are -- well, actually, I can type just fine, because something about that position doesn't put strain on my hand. It does seem to slowly be going away, because today I could actually unbutton my jeans without screaming in pain or having to switch hands. I'm afraid to go to WebMD and poke around because I'm afraid it'll tell me that I've given myself permanent nerve damage.

This is unrelated to the brand new recurring pain in my left middle finger, just above the joint, that showed up about two weeks ago.

I am the only person I know who has three separate things wrong with one hand. If I'm going to keep injuring myself, I'd really rather that next time it be a completely different body part and also be something I can show my parents and say, "Yes, I really have hurt myself, no, I'm not making it up, no, it's not all in my head, yes, I know what caused it, yes, I know what it is."

The thing is, I've been living with the wrist pain for so long -- it's been nine months since it started, or maybe closer to ten now -- that I don't constantly complain about it anymore. Which is a good thing! Because constantly complaining about my own pain does get boring. The wrist pain I am used to, except when it flares up. If it's something new, like the pain in my finger or whatever I did to my hand, I immediately go to worst-case scenario, and then, over the next few days, I start worrying about the fact that while I think the pain has gone down or I've gotten more functional, maybe I've just gotten used to it and learned how to work around it. Pain is so subjective, after all. And sadly, while I do at this point have a fairly substantial OTC pain medication collection (my parents are horrified, because I grew up in the kind of family that never even had aspirin in the house, let alone ibuprofen. I was in college by the time I figured out it was okay to take painkillers for period pain. When I got my wisdom teeth taken out after sophomore year, my mother threw away the Vicodin I'd been prescribed and I had to make due with ibuprofen), because ibuprofen and paracetamol had very little to no effect on the wrist pain, I mostly just don't bother trying because it's already wired in my brain, "this doesn't work." I really don't know if that's a healthy reaction or not. Then I worry about that because ha, chronic pain, who cares about a healthy reaction?

I think a couple of weeks ago I finally got it across to my mother that it wasn't occasional pain, that it wasn't me being really stupid and hurting myself, it was constant low-grade pain. And at this point, because I'm so used to it, if I do start complaining or even just make a comment about it, it doesn't mean that something hurts and I'm whining about it, it means that something that usually doesn't hurt hurts, and because the last time I woke up and something hurt that didn't usually hurt, it never stopped hurting. The first time, back in February, when I woke up with aching wrists, I didn't panic. I just thought, oh, that's weird, I guess it'll go away by tomorrow.

It didn't go away.

3 wsip meme

Oooh, I actually have three works in progress for a change! So, a meme, snagged from musesfool:

1. "Dwelling on lives that never were gains nothing but regret, my young Padawan."

2. Mostly he’s seeing “abject failure” as the most likely outcome, shortly followed by “dying horribly.”

3. "But I'm your padawan," he said again, as if he repeated it enough times it would come true in more than a highly theoretical technical sense.

*

Man, I had to pull up the most recent chapter of Dust to do this, which I most recently worked on back at the beginning of August before descending into dissertation hell and experiencing my usual post-classics brain switch from fantasy to sci-fi (I did this last year too) and I seem to have forgotten that this chapter was actually...not terrible? I mean, it's wacky as all hell, but it's supposed to be considering it takes place on an insane sentient island in the throes of [REDACTED] and the main characters include the godfather of Cair Paravel, a king from another age and another world mid-apotheosis, an undead ghost tiger bodyguard who's been dead for two millennia, and an enslaved dwarf sheriff.

...wow, that makes it sound crazier than it actually is. I SWEAR IT ALL MAKES SENSE IN CONTEXT.

Sadly I'm probably not going back to Dust until at least December, since my NaNovel is my Star Wars genderfuck mistaken identity murder mystery slash political thriller with unresolved unrequited romantic undertones WIP DEAR GODS CAN'T I WRITE ANYTHING NORMAL ahem.