I’ve been thinking about my thumb a lot for obvious reasons. It’s funny how much you take things for granted until it hurts like fucking hell. well, to be more precise, it aches like hell. It doesn’t hurt, per se, except the time I slept without the splint because I foolishly decided I didn’t need to wear it at night any longer. That’s where my background comes in because my mom is the same way. The second something feels better, she decides she can go 100 again. She recently had surgery on her shoulder (which had issues that made me so angry at my father and the doctor, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it because she was in Taiwan) and she was upset when she wasn’t back to her normal self in a month. She complained, saying her doctor said that’s how long it would take.
I doubt he said that exactly because she has a habit of hearing what she wants to hear, but even if he had something similar to that, it doesn’t make any kind of sense to think that you’d completely heal from a major surgery in a month. That’s the thing about being a perfectionist, however, and I know this from experience. We don’t have much resource for dealing with ongoing frustration. In my brain, I should be able to think my way to a solution. Also, despite my contrarian nature, I am a rules follower for the most part. So, in my brain, if I am actively working on improving my thumb, then it should get better. And it is, but on such a slow schedule. First week, I just tried to massage the thumb and take it easy. While wearing a splint. I do stretches for my thumb every day and today, I received my heat/ice therapy assists (gel patches, gel finger splint, gel mittens. The gel packs can go either hot or cold). I’m going to do some heat/ice therapy and see if that helps as well.
On the taiji front (because you know I can’t go a post without talking about it.
Side note: When I first started studying taiji, I would notice how much my teacher talked about it and how she had made it central to her life. We are friends as well as teacher/student and in the Before Times, we used to hang out while not in class sometimes. It was clear to me that taiji was her life. Which, good for her, but I didn’t understand it. I was doing it begrudgingly and not really wanting to be there.
But, something inside drove me to keep doing it, and now, it is my life. It’s not all of it or even most of it to the extent it is with my teacher, but it’s an important chunk. Especially the weapons. I can talk about them ad nauseam and maunder on about how much I love them. Now, I understand the passion that my teacher has always shown for it, even if my focus is different than hers. In addition, there are so many ways it’s helped me that aren’t directly related to taiji itself, it’s hard to talk about other issues without bringing up taiji.
As for my thumb, my teacher has recommended I teach myself the left side of the Sword Form in order to gently stretch and strengthen my left thumb area. I’d taught it to myself years ago, but never practiced it. I’ve always found it easier to teach myself than the Solo Form, in part because the Solo form is constantly being tweaked and fairly recently went through a massive overhaul. Mostly, though, it’s because I love weapons and am now stridently neutral about the Solo Form. Today, I finished teaching myself the left side of the Sword Form, which means it took me five days. That’s not bad at all! That doesn’t mean it’s perfect by far, but now it’s refinements and polishing. I do know that it was partly so easy because I had done it before, but that wasn’t difficult, either. In fact, the hardest posture to teach myself was the Fishing Posture, which is the easiest posture of the form.
The Whirlwinds Left and Right? No problem! Blue Dragon Twists Its Tail? A breeze! But the goddamn Fishing Posture? Something I can do in my sleep on the right side? It took me a half hour to teach myself the left side version the first time around. My teacher’s theory is that I brushed it off as being easy so never really thought about it. Which is true. One of the movements I do best in the Solo Form is Fist Under Elbow, the one that gave me fits as I was learning it? I know it inside and out because I had to take it apart before I understood it. With the Fishing Posture, I just did it with no thought on the right side.
After a few weeks, next up will be the left side of the Sabre Form. That I haven’t taught to myself before so it’ll be interesting. I’m not sweating about it, however, because I think I’ll be up to the challenge when I get around to it. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but I don’t anticipate it causing me too much trouble, either. Pride goes before a fall? Maybe. But I don’t think I’m being unduly hubristic.
It’s frustrating. My thumb, I mean. I’m doing everything I can to not stress it, and it’s getting better, but it’s taking it’s damn sweet time. I don’t have to use it for much of anything, but it’s still frustrating that it’s all fucked up. When I have to twist off a lid or something like that, then I can feel the actual pain. Also, I’m of two minds when it comes to wearing my splint. I know I need to wear it at night while I’m sleeping because of involuntary movement, but do I really need to wear it all the time during the day? That’s where I’m not sure. When I take off the splint and about twenty minutes later, sometimes, the thumb is almost perfectly fine. A whiff of a click, but it moves with ease. But then, the longer the thumb is free, the more it stiffens up until it’s back to where it used to be. It doesn’t matter if I stretch it or massage it, it just does its own thing.
That’s life, I guess? I’ll report back in a week.