Stitches... Gone.

I was supposed to have my stitches gone this morning. That's not exactly how it worked out.

I could see the incision was well healed days ago. The stitches were what were now causing issues. They pulled the skin on the back of my hand up into a high lump.  I could have said painful, but so long as I didn't use the hand it wasn't much of an issue. 

Yeah, right. Have you ever tried not using your main hand? Especially since I'm so strongly left handed. I took a quiz decades ago, asking which hand was placed where on a broom, and how often, for example, to help you figure out how strongly left or right handed you were. I was top of the chart, lefty leading everything. It's such a habit that I'd kept bandaging the hand for several days after I needed to just to remind me - sort of - not to use it yet.

It did manage to keep the hand dry, and let's please not discuss sanitation, eh? I did manage not to poison myself, and let's just let it go there. There are workarounds if one really tries.

But I was still using the hand for nearly everything, just because after three quarters of a century, one does what one has always done. I did put gloves on for some heavy pruning of a bush (not completed) which managed to dig the glove into the back of my hand just below the stitches, accentuating the bulge. Yes, of curse it hurt, enough to nag me for days. I'll get back to the bush... some time. Technically next early spring will be fine, though now is better. Right now planting takes precedence.

With the skin still pulled tight from the stitches and general swelling, there was one advantage - if I were vain. (Personally I find it amusing.) When I compare my hands side by side, the undamaged one has about 140% more wrinkles! Look, if wrinkles on geezer hands bother you, I do NOT recommend this solution. Particularly because what was also happening was the stitches on the back side were disappearing into the skin. When they first went in they made a solid black line on that side. Now they were three dots, and not even in a very straight line at that, as if that mattered. I'm not criticizing my surgeon on her sewing skills like she was putting together an heirloom quilt. I'm not that old yet! Come check if I'm an heirloom in another 25 years!

The stitches were starting to bother me more than the hand issues before surgery had. It was time to see about getting them out. There was this morning's appointment. It turns out there was also one last Wednesday, and somebody called me from the office to push my Friday appointment forward, also to Wednesday but late in the afternoon. Hmmm, one appointment per stitch? 

Yeah, I don't think so. How could they charge the insurance company for three visits, for starters?

Fortunately I got the usual (thank goodness!) pre-appointment reminder call (please confirm you are coming, or not) for both Wednesday appointments, and called back to take the earliest one and let them know to cancel the other two for the same thing. I hadn't even known about the first one, just the Friday one.

I was a little nervous walking in. I'd gotten a do-it-yourself stitches pulling kit from the surgeon, but once those stitches started digging in, lost all interest in doing it myself, especially since I'd need to use my "wrong" hand. Just a bit pain-averse, you see. With all I've gone through, it seems a bit silly, but even so. I was actually hoping for a local to numb it, but while they didn't actually laugh, it just wasn't done. "Overkill" was the word they used. As it turned out, they were right. The person pulling them out was skilled and gentle. No pain, just the relief that the pulling from them staying in was gone.

There was one tiny issue, however, The black lines on the back of my hand? Still there!  I pointed them out, and she pointed out that the stitches removed were wholly intact, let me use my fingernail to try to remove what turned out to only be a discoloration in the skin. Dye transfer? We're not sure. But the lump is slowly going down, I'm back busy digging in the dirt trying to take advantage of a warm fall to get my bulbs and seeds all planted, and while I get tired and achey after - heck, WHILE I'd doing it! - it's getting done. The rest of me aches of course, but that's normal. The hand is fine.

Weird looking. But fine.  

A bit tender if one pushes on the lumpy part, which I'm the only one who does, but, really, fine. Honest!

Still fewer wrinkles than the other one though. But all the liver spots are intact. Lucky me. You know, just in case I was worried somebody switched hands while I wasn't looking, or something else Halloweenish, eh?