Sunday, February 12, 2012

Bracing Up

I have a locked brace on my right arm. When the cast came off on Monday the surgeon wanted to replace it with another cast,  and I asked for the brace.  He agreed,  and his PA put what is known as a Bledsoe Brace on my arm. The best way to describe the brace is that it looks like a robotic attachment. The locking mechanism is on the outside of my elbow, any the supports are placed above and below the elbow at intervals. The brace can be unlocked (I figured out how to do that, but I won't mess with it) and likely will be in a little over 2 weeks.
When the brace first went on I experienced a considerable amount of spasm activity in my forearm. It was incredibly uncomfortable and lasted a couple of days. The is is compounded by some irritation I have on the top of my wrist in an area in line with my thumb. From what the surgeon told me, apparently this is a common side affliction with this procedure, and the only way to treat this is medically. To that end, I'm taking 600mg of Neurontin once a day before bed.
I still have irritation, but I sleep really well. One of the side effects of Neurontin is drowsiness, and while I haven't had any of that, at least overtly, I am slleping well. And I think my circadian clock is normalizing.
For Biochemistry I had to set up another blog site, called "Trachim Biochemistry Connections" - a really original blog name, but there is a reason for it. The instructor is trying to keep all of the blog names uniform for tracking purposes, which I understand.  The entries we make are responses to assignments given throughout the semester. There is one each week, and I think they have potential for being interesting assignments. Should you be interested in these entries, I welcome your reading them.
So I have to engage in some studying at this point - more to follow later.

2 comments:

TOTWTYTR said...

Trachim of Borg!

Unknown said...

Yeah yeah... Resistance is futile... :)