Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

During the night last night, the fingers on both my hands were hurting, and I couldn't make a fist with either. Getting up and running warm water over them helped, enough that I could and did go back to sleep. It's still not great, but I can sort of close both hands, and the pain has receded enough that I forgot to mention it to cattitude until adrian_turtle asked how I was doing.

"Receded" here means stiffness, mostly, which I have sadly gotten used to. Wondering if I should be taking NSAIDs for it more often.

I am just back from seeing the hand doctor. She diagnosed it as trigger finger again, both hands this time, and did i want both cortisone shots now.

i said yes, despite likely numbness for an hour or so (not bad, if at all, that was 20 minutes ago as i type) and the risk of a pain flare-up from the cortisone. not having had the flare last time, i decided to do it, despite the work deadline saturday night.

I think/hope this will work. ( cut for discussion of hand problems )

If this works, I may start feeling better in a couple of days, or it might take a couple of weeks. If I don't notice any effect in a couple of weeks, I can call the hand doctor again and/or call the occupational therapist and get an orthotic made. I asked for, and got, a prescription for the orthotic, so I won't have to go back to Dr. Green if the cortisone doesn't do the job. In the meantime, I should keep icing, and avoid "heavy" gripping with that hand.

The doctor said that if this works, it may solve this problem for good, or I might need another cortisone injection some months or years from now. That's a time-scale I can accept.

I just finished a copyedit for a new freelance client: they wanted someone who was comfortable with math, but didn't want me editing the math (good), beyond looking at end-of-line punctuation for display equations. So, at about 2:30 this afternoon I sent them the edited book, my invoice, and a cover letter.

The message bounced. First Panix said that was too large an outgoing message for their mail system. Then I tried gmail, which got me a bounce message from the client's mail system. So I sent another email, saying that the project is done but their mail system bounced it, and how do they handle receiving large files (likely dropbox, but I'm waiting to hear back). The odd thing is that their system will send messages that big.

This was a flat-rate job, for which the client offered $400. I looked at the manuscript and said I'd do it for $475, which they accepted. I didn't track hours on this one, but I think my price quote was reasonable from that angle. What I didn't take into account was that editing on PDFs (by writing comments) is physically harder for me than in Word. That doesn't mean I should charge more, so much as think more carefully about whether to take on such projects at all.

Meanwhile, my contact at ACM sent me the first few smaller files from that bimonthly batch about an hour before I finished working on this book. PDFs again, so I may not even look at them until Thursday.

This was the first PT in a bit over two weeks (because I was on vacation, and then I postponed what would have been Tuesday's session to give the ankle a bit of time to rest/recover).

( mostly for my records )

I'm just back from Farthing Party, papersky's small science fiction convention/large party in Montreal. cattitude and I had a wonderful time, and I think julian_tiger is in the process of forgiving us.

( long con/travel write-up, in no particular order )

Good cardio, and about 2/3 of a very up session with Emilie, then I felt the energy drop and we did the rest more slowly and carefully.

( details )

My hands are not as happy. I saw my GP on Tuesday to check into a mix of left hand issues (notably waking with the hand stiff and hurting many mornings) and one episode of forearm pain on the same side. The doctor thinks it may be tendonitis, and said to buy a brace to wear at night and take moderately large doses of anti-inflammatories. I was worried I'd have trouble falling asleep with the brace on; that hasn't happened. Wednesday morning I woke up and the hand didn't hurt, which was encouraging, but yesterday and this morning it did. However, the instructions are to do this for 7-14 days, and if it isn't better, the next step is a nerve conduction study to try to identify where the problem is. Based on my descriptions of the problems, she said it could be either of at least two, maybe three. So, brace at night, and 375 mg of naproxen twice a day (a normal over-the-counter pill is 200 mg, and the OTC packaging says take one or two but no more than a total of three in 24 hours). And then I think I overused it at work this afternoon. I'm hoping the long weekend, and my planned trip to Montreal, will help me to not spend too much time at the keyboard (this doesn't mean not chatting with people, it means not refreshing DW/LJ over and over, or spending lots of time doing Sudoku puzzles). The closest I have to weekend plans involve time in Inwood Hill Park, and maybe some dim sum if I don't sleep too late on Sunday.

Doing a lot more stuff left-handed is helping my shoulder, yes.

But my left hand hurts, from too much typing and mousing (and probably miscellaneous other tasks). It's definitely the hand, and especially the fingers.

Suggestions that do not involve hiding in bed for the next week are welcome.