Category Archives: Writing

I’ve been thinking a lot about hands.  Between looking at, and thinking about, the pictures that RA Guy put together on Show Us Your Hands on Facebook and writing about those hands and other hands here and here and thinking about my new RA nodules, I have been thinking and talking a lot about hands.

Having hands that hurt or having hands that are twisted and that don’t work quite the way they were designed to work really does affect you.  Until I was talking to a young friend of mine about hands today, and until he was talking to me about noticing how many things that we do every day with our hands, I guess I just didn’t really think about what all hands do or should do.

The one thing that hands do that is hardest to deal with when hands… well… don’t… is holding hands.  When you hands hurt, it is hart to be willing to reach out to hold someone’s hand.  It is hard, when your fingers are twisted (or overly lumpy and bumpy) to reach out and be willing to let people hold our hands, touch our hands.  It is hard to comfort or take comfort from other people if you can’t reach out and hold someone else’s hand.

Thank you Christopher for being willing to listen and for understanding.  Many people much older than you don’t and can’t.

I know what it is like to have someone see my hands, with their bumps and their scars, and explain in great detail how my hands give them nightmares.  I have a couple little bumps and those come and go and aren’t ALL that obvious.  The scars have been there, to one degree or another for…well… 14 years.  Since I broke it and hand it fixed and had it rebroken and had it rebroken and carved up with cadaver bone put in (the dead guy in my arm story was really cool) and finally rebroken and carved up and fixed right.  I’ve never been PROUD of my scars (and the butt head guy who told me at least when I tried to do it I did it right and I was lucky they saved my life when I committed the sin of attempting suicide… I paid someone a LOT of money to create that scar, thank you very much).  I have rarely been ashamed of my hands and my scars.  Until she pointed out that I give her nightmares.

But hands really are important.  And when they hurt it can be inconvenient.  I’m very grateful that mine are not to the point where it hurts to hold hands.

My hand (not sure if my mom quite realizes the significance of this picture or not) finally works.  Or rather, my wrist finally works, the way it did before it was broken 14 years ago.  That is amazing.  I can hold my hand, palm up, without bending anything at an unnatural angle… I can hold BOTH hands beside each other and they are the same!!!