Hi. I’m Hannah.
Life has been so boring lately at Casa Mother of Cats. Last week the Mother of Cats noticed that she had a sore lump on her arm along one of her tendons. Then her wrist started to hurt. Then her arm and hand started to hurt a lot and her wrist got swollen, so she put a brace on it. I hate the brace because it is clunky when she pets me. I was already unhappy about the brace when she got worse, and her wrist and hand hurt so much that she couldn’t even get our tuna open!! THE HORROR!!!! She stopped letting us outside and just laid around sleeping and ignoring us. While this was going on the weather changed outside and I didn’t even get to go out to see what was happening.
All of the leaves fell off of my tree, and it suddenly got really cold. Most of the birds that were hanging around the feeder disappeared, but that darn cute dove and the bunny look like they are planning to hang around forever. We love to play in the dead leaves and to watch the doves, but did the Mother of Cats let us out all morning like usual? No. She did not. She just dumped out some tuna without even mixing it up properly and went back to bed. This is not the care that I am accustomed to receiving!
She spent a couple of days immobile with heat packs on her wrist over the brace, and then she had to put a brace on her other hand and said it hurt to walk. The Mother of Cats was completely broken at that point! She was such a baby about getting up to give the CoalBear and me our tuna and cookies. I had to just insist that the late-night tuna snacks arrived on time. I had to actually MEOW to get her up and moving. Lazy, lazy, broken Mother of Cats.
Slowly the Mother of Cats got better, and yesterday she managed to function without her brace all day. Today she finally wove in all the ends on her new sweater and tried it on. I tried to sleep on the sweater while she was doing that and chased the ends (hello… I’m a cat!), and it was like she was finally returning to normal. Oh. Look at that sweater. It is kind of cute. She doesn’t look all that broken today; maybe I’ll start getting better care again! Maybe she will let me out onto the catio later tonight so I can look for bunnies and even that scary raccoon.
In the meantime, I guess I’ll catch a nap.
This is Hannah, signing off.
>^..^<
Notes from the Mother of Cats:
- I have had severe flares of tendonitis before, but this one took the prize! Once it got going the inflammation affected all my other joints and even my breathing. Whew. Glad it is over: it’s been 10 days without knitting!!!
- Do you know how hard it is to open a package of tuna or a bottle of Tylenol with only your left hand?
- I binge watched Dopesick during the worst couple of days and ended up tearing the house apart hunting for some oxycontin that I thought I might have left over from my lung biopsy adventure. No oxy, only Tylenol. Sad me.
- A friend told me that there is an insurance code for “knitting injury”. I kind of laughed every time I thought wistfully of knitting and was prevented by… bad wrist, bad!!! I had to laugh every time I considered heading into urgent care with my pretty sad knitting injured wrist…
- The sweater is La Prairie by Joji Locatelli. After blocking and finishing it is everything that I hoped for.
- I’m slowly easing back into knitting by using the little knitting machine to make hand warmers…
- While I was cut off from knitting, I read several new books of the science fiction persuasion. My reading challenge for the year is almost completed!
Yarn, Books & Roses 
So sorry to hear this! I hope you feel much better soon, and I wish you all the best.
I’m much better than I was a week ago, and hopefully I’ll be back to knitting a few days.
Christ on a bicycle, Hanah, this news is not at all welcome. No, NOT about the MoC not stirring up your tuna properly – that is not what I meant !
Marilyn, the awful tendonitis must be the gods’ way of getting even with you for that specialist’s having found more lung the other week. You know they reckon there has to be balance – bad for good and all that. :} Would you please have your medicos provide you with some serious pain-killers to have on hand for episodes like that ? – shouldn’t be too hard for them …
The new cardi is an absolute ripper !!! Must be wonderful to be a size that you can fit perfectly every time. I s’pose it’s your perfect gauge management. Do you let Joji see your finished products ? – she’d be tickled like anything.
Hannah: obviously, you do not understand the importance of TUNA!!!
Sadly, I think that the tendonitis was a consequence of the long trips out of the house and being more active, and the knitting was also a big part of it I think. This is the way it goes, one thing is better, but another is worse. I’ve really been struggling with shortness of breath lately, and as the technician told me, the lung result really support the hypothesis that my heart is not behaving well. I was wearing the heart monitor when I got that testing done and I shared what was going on with her.
Unfortunately, you cannot get pain med easily here in the US. I have always subscribed to the theory that the cause of the pain needs to be addressed, and pain medicine is just a stop gap. Most of the time that works for me, but the last week was pretty challenging because NO KNITTING!!
I do use sweaters that I love the fit on when deciding on the size I knit so I get the drape that I’m after. I posted the pictures and updated my project on Ravelry so Joji and others can see it. I’m really happy with the longer size.
And so you should be – as ever, your knitting is a work of art, a positive joy to behold.
I know about others’ pain: my beloved husband died of lung cancer, and the oxycontin at the end was something he resented greatly but had to use. It seems our medicos are far less strict with pain medication: I don’t find it difficult to get some to have on hand for dental pain that comes and goes (and as a pensioner, it tends to be better to deal with the pain than get governmental dental assistance).
Your attitude to it is entirely logical: I just wish you didn’t need to have that attitude. 😦
Oxycontin use was so abused in the US leading to so many addicts and deaths that it is now hard to get meds for pain. I was kind of shocked when my rheumatologist gave me a course of oxy last year when I was struggling with fibromyalgia so bad following my wannabe covid adventure. The better choice for me, in my opinion, is to take my chances with bleeding and down Ibuprofen for a few days since it is also a good anti-inflammatory.
I am so sorry about your husband, It breaks by heart that good men die too young and some others who are absolutely a stain on humanity just seem to keep going and going…
Sorry to hear about the tendinitis, it sounds terrible. Do you read Yarns from the lake blog. She has some gnomes done using it knitting machine.
I read Yarn from the Lake now! Thank you for the info. I saw a cute little cat made on the knitting machine, and I’m wondering if the gnome can also be done on my machine. The machine in her blog are the antique sock knitting machines of old that are still pretty darn cool (and expensive!!) and knit at a much smaller gauge.
What a lovely sweater! So comfy looking, and the color and the design suit you.
Your friend is right. Regarding the knitting injury to your tendons, there’s an ICD-10 code that covers “activity, knitting or crocheting, Y93.D1,” for billable purposes. I didn’t see a code for activity, lifting or petting a kitty, or activity, one-handed opening of pill bottles or cat food. Maybe that’ll be in the newly revised version of the code. On a serious note, I’m glad the swelling is down and you’re feeling better. Your tenacity never ceases to amaze me.
Tenacity is such a nice word! I try to be relentlessly resilient when things become difficult. I was able to jam the Tylenol bottle into a drawer so it was immobilized as I pressed down on the cap to get it open. There was a pipe wrench involved at one point too. My next plan was to cut it open with a rose pruner…
Today my hand looks completely normal: all the swelling is gone. So crazy, huh.
If, heaven forbid, this happens again, you might try immobilizing the plastic bottle as before, then put a serrated knife blade on a burner of your electric stove, and heat it up. Apply the super hot blade to the end of the bottle and, if it’s hot enough, it should slice through like cold butter. I had to do that to a plastic bottle that Wal Mart didn’t want us to refill, so when the sprayer quit working and I couldn’t unscrew the fused sprayer from the bottle, I cut off the darn top, making sure that there was no wet liquid in the neck. It’s a pain to do, but it worked, and I was able to salvage the rest of the liquid.
That’s a good idea. I did consider using my miter saw with its box, but your idea is cleaner.
I’m glad to hear your arm is on the mend. The sweater is gorgeous!
Im glad you are starting to feel better. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks around here, too.
Im glad you are starting to feel better. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks around here, too.
A new skill to learn … left-handed cat food can opening. A new Olympic sport?
I had no idea that tendonitis could affect more than the immediate area. Ugh. Definitely need to refill that oxy Rx.
That sweater is beautiful. So intricate! I can’t even imagine how something like that is done. Zero experience with knitting.
Bird ‘n’ Bunny. A new gift shop.
It really is remarkable how a localized injury can ripple out with systemic impact. I think that I am already in a delicate balance and so it is easy to tip things over to the inflammatory side once some of those immune-system inflammatory molecules get circulating. The big shock was how much my blood oxygen level dropped: I was in the high 80s for a couple of days and had to go back on oxygen. That’s when I started sleeping more, which is also one of my flare indicators. When my lung disease took off three years ago the red flag was sleeping 12 hours a day…
That sweater is intricate. I spent some time on YouTube learning new skills, but once I had them down things went faster.
Bird ‘n’ Bunny. I love it!! Maybe it can sell yarn too.
Glad you are feeling a bit better. The sweater looks great. Love the colors.
So sorry to hear you had such a bad tendonitis flare! I hope you are on the mend and feeling better. Hannah – help your MoC to rest and heal up!
Replying a few days behind, but I hope that means you’re feeling all better now (instead of just starting to feel better). The sweater looks great! And you finished it just in time, since the weather is changing.
That sounds rough, I’m so glad it started getting better again.
la prairie always looked pretty in your updates, but it’s STUNNING now it’s finished.
Thank you. I am happy with it and hopefully it will be out on an outing soon!