My thumb hurts. Really bad. With the dry weather, my skin is cracking and this place on my thumb is split open, bleeding, and painful.
But I’m not disabled.
You just don’t think about how much you use your thumb. I feel like I’m hitting it on everything. Trying to take notes at Bible study this morning, I had to hold my pen funny to be able to write. It’s bleeding because I used it (as I always do) to push the button on my daughter’s car seat, and it split open. I’ve had to pick things up, push buttons, and turn things on at strange angles for two days now. Over Christmas, it happened at the same time that I burned the tips of two other fingers. I felt like I couldn’t do anything without pain.
Yes, it’s irritating and frustrating. But it mostly makes me think about how good I have it. I’m able bodied and agile and can make my body do pretty much whatever it needs to do, usually without pain.
Sometimes I start to think my “slob issues” are a disability. I’ve blamed them on self-diagnosed ADD, people-over-things focus, creative/distractable brain, even exceptional brilliance (ha ha). All these things might be true in some way, but I’m not disabled.
There are people who do notice the mess, and hate it. They would give anything to be able to stand long enough to do the dishes. They would love to be able to bend over and clean behind the toilet. They would love to have two little boys who make it necessary to do that.
I’m not disabled.
I am so thankful for my health, and that I am physically able to make these changes and develop these habits.
Fix for cracking thumb… rub a little A&D ointment in that spot before bed. It will never happen again.
Emu oil is also great for skin-related stuff.
Extra helpful when your thumb is cracked: put on those thin surgical gloves once you’ve rubbed the ointment on. I prefer to do this during the day, and then distract myself by doing something ‘active’ but dry like folding laundry. This way you hand gets nice and warm and takes up the ointment better, and you don’t have to sleep with them on.
I hear you. I AM disabled – progressive MS. Currently using a walker, and hobbling around upright – barely. Transitioning to a wheelchair sometime in the next few months. Yup – the area behind the toilet – heck the whole outside of the toilet, the shower floor, tub floor, all the floors period – all things I can’t manage myself. But I can do counters, sinks and the inside/top of the toilet still. I can still tidy and put away – very very slowly but I do get there (like the sloths in Zootopia!). It is making me very efficient about leaving things out where they shouldn’t be, as it just makes more work later. Asking for help has been a hard lesson to learn, but humility is different from humiliation, and I try to hold to that. A dirty, messy, unkept house would be humiliating. Getting my family members to do various things I cannot do is just humbling.