fingers

I have no choice but to make this short (or what counts as brief for me): I only have one hand. Slicing broccoli normally doesn’t cause me problems, but as my mental condition deteriorates off Cymbalta, even routine tasks are becoming hard. The knife careened off the stalk I was skinning.

I like to put broccoli flowers in salads, and after I chop up the tops I always split the peeled stalks with Ralphy, one of our two dogs. Tonight the blade slipped as I was cutting off the rind, and I somehow managed to slide the tip of my left ring finger between the knife’s edge and the cutting board. The blade nearly sliced off the part of the figertip distal to (sorry for the medical term–’distal to’ just means ‘further out than’) the nail. My pain tolerance is high, but this surprised me with how much it hurt. The end of the finger obviously contains a dense network of nerve endings. Luckily, there was enough of an attachment remaining that after a long period of washing, and then even more time placing pressure to staunch the bleeding, Mandy was able to secure the little flap in place with an adhesive strip. As an operating room nurse, she would have preferred to drive to the emergency department to see if they could stitch the tiny piece down. As a former (ophthalmic) plastic surgeon, I felt that a successful job would have taken very fine suture and a high degree of skill. I did not think I would get that level of care for this minor problem, and a trip to the ED would only waste 3-4 hours driving, and who knows how long waiting to be seen. In the end, I would have come out with an adhesive strip–much like the one Mandy already attached.

Time was I never would have been so careless with a sharp blade. I prided myself on being able to handle knives, scalpels, etc., skilfully and safely. Now, ten years later, I am very much out of practice. My acquired ineptness with cutting instruments, combined with antidepressant withdrawal (which floods me with the distracting conviction that life is pointless, and also saps my energy levels) caused me to stupidly cut myself. So here I am typing with two fingers and a thumb on one hand, while I keep the other elevated to reduce swelling.

Before this injury, I had toyed with making my next post about the dreadful and permanent side effects I’ve suffered from taking psychiatric drugs. That would have been a big step, because I feel a great deal of shame. Yet doing so will ultimately help me heal and, more importantly, might serve as a warning to others. Maybe cutting off a part of myself was an unconscious way of putting off this decision. So, another time.

I would have a better outlook, increased energy, and sharper judgment if I went back on Cymbalta. But, mainly because of how similar drugs have wrecked my body, I just can’t bring myself to swallow that nasty little green pill. So I keep on in this deteriorating mode, hoping that things don’t get too much worse before they start getting better. I suspect my body needs to regrow a huge number serotonin and/or norepinephrine receptors, as per a post I wrote not long ago. Given how far I’ve sunk since I penned that essay, it seems like it could have been in another lifetime.

Mandy thinks I need to take a break from writing, and a number of other activities important to me, in order to give my fingertip the best chance of healing properly. Since my mood continues to take me to more and more maudlin and self-pitying places, that might be a good idea even without the finger issue. So for a little while I may spend less time blogging. If nothing else, I can concentrate on learning how to customize my blog functionality and layout. I have a stack of books on html, css, php, java, mySQL, etc, that I’ve been unable to devote time to because of the hours spent drafting posts and exploring blogs. I figure if writing never leads to an income, by acquiring programming abilities as I work on my site I will be in a position to look for work in computers instead. But to achieve that objective, the books need to be read.

Nothing as ambitious as success (either as a writer or programmer) will be attained if I don’t recover my emotional equilibrium. I can’t express how much regret consumes me when I think about how a therapist finally talked me into taking medications, and how I went ahead despite a lifetime of opposition to psychiatric drugs. My hesitation was born of watching my mother destroy herself with drugs given to her by psychiatrists, and now I have done exactly the same thing. Except that unlike her, I remain alive… Barely.

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