Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals

Sunday morning Chez du Plessis, and we are post-breakfast chilling at various stations a round home. Alex is studying. Beth is annoying her. Anton is preparing his lunch for the week. It’s been snowing outside. I love the early mornings on snow days, when it’s dark and quiet and crisp with fresh snow, and families in their homes begin to get up; the lights from our homes are like beacons in the darkness, a sign of comfort I guess. It’s my second Sunday morning at home with my family, the first time for consecutive lazy Sundays since our Summer holidays. It’s a little like having a luxurious holiday actually, if I’m allowed to admit. You see, I’m on 6 weeks of sick leave having had carpal tunnel surgery last Friday, and while I am a lot more mobile this weekend (I could wash my own hair in the shower for example), there is still a fair bit of hand strength I need to get back, so I am exempt from doing chores, and cooking and cleaning. Most of those I don’t mind so much. I am much more content to not be working. It’s weird. Having convinced myself in September that I could deal with my adapted working hours, these evenings at home being able to be with my girls and Anton have been appreciated by all. Even if Anton is having to take cooking instruction from me. Even if I have to fight with Beth because she falls asleep on my lap without brushing her teeth. Even if I have to listen to the teenagers acting like cats from different households.

The first time I woke up with pins and needles in my fingers was after a busy shift at work was in 2003 when I was working at Bluebird restaurant in London. I think that first time I thought it had been the result of sleeping on my hand, but when it happened every single day afterwards despite me actively making sure to not sleep with my hands tucked into me. I eventually realised it was work related: those were days of fearing the sound of the ticket printer with its endless buzzing, pushing 150 meals out with skilled co-ordination and sheer dead fatigue taking the bus back home at midnight.

If I think back through the journey of this pain in my wrists, fingers, hands, I can’t remember it being a problem in my years as a chef in South Africa. Did I work less? No, I don’t think it’s that. It might be the nature of the work: my fine motor grip extended by a pair of tongs is the one element that seems to be the underlying commonality. The pain returned with a vengeance in 2018 after I had been working quite full on in a pub here in France. But it came and went and being the Generation X kid that I am, I just dealt with the consequences. Late 2019 I eventually decided to go to my doctor: the sleeplessness was beginning to wear me down. French general practitioners are good for one thing here in France: writing a referral for a specialist. (If you seek out a specialist without that referral, our social security won’t refund the costs). So, our old Chinese doctor gave me a letter and a name of a rheumatologist. I had already been to see him in 2017 for similar pain, but he’d x-rayed my wrist and told me I had a pinched nerve, probably resulting from a ice skating fall. He had injected my wrist with something and sent me packing. When I returned to him in January 2020 he didn’t even bother with an x-ray. By then, I felt the pain had extended all the way to my elbow (deferred pain while trying to avoid my pincher grip perhaps). And that I was struggling to sleep. The old rheumatologist sent me off for 2 weeks of sick leave and a referral to do physio. The physio helped, the time off work was a godsend, and when I returned to work almost fresh by the end of January, I had 6 weeks of working underway when we were hit with that pandemic. On and off for the following 18 months, I wasn’t under enormous work pressure, and the pain I had endured was forgotten. And then, October 2021, I returned to work properly. By May 2022, I wasn’t sleeping. At all. I would tumble into bed at 1 in the morning, and by 4am, I would be upright and having to walk around my quiet apartment trying to feel blood returning to my fingertips. And no sooner had I fallen asleep half an hour later, I would be upright again, the same dead numbness in my arm. I would wake up at 6 in the morning with the kids to get them ready for school, and would have to hold my coffee cup in my non-dominant hand because I had no sensation in my writing hand, with it’s almost claw-like grip frozen. By then the pain up to my elbow had returned, and my neck and shoulders would cry out in agony too.

By this time, however, we had had to find a new doctor; the old Chinese man who we had grown fond of had retired in March, and Anton had found a new doctor for us. Still quite weary that anybody could actually DO anything about what I was going through, I went to see our new vibrant young woman doctor with trepidation.

I am not sure if I resembled a haggard old woman on the verge of a breakdown (which wasn’t far from the truth back then), but she immediately set me on a path of recovery. Initially it had been a week of anti-inflammatories (which made me feel shitter) and a wrist brace, with a referral to have my wrist scanned for damage. Given waiting times for scans etc are a little longer than a week or 2, it was June by the time I went back with the info that there was no visible damage to my wrist, and a specific electro-magnetic scan was necessary. This required another referral letter, and unfortunately an even longer delay in being able to get that appointment: It was mid-November by the time I got the confirmed verdict: carpal tunnel syndrome, and surgery would be required to repair it. Another 3 weeks to see the surgeon, and finally an actual surgery date- mid January once the Christmas season had died down and my boss had taken his leave.

So here I am, once again sitting at home in quiet January recovering. This time it’s for 6 weeks. I don’t think my colleagues are ecstatic, but it’s not like this has been a surprise for them. Even so, I find myself questioning if I am ‘milking’ it- was it not possible to just endure those painful nights?

How was the actual surgery? Ah well, I have a veritable trove of thoughts that surfaced while waiting for anaesthesia, while being operated on and afterwards. For all 120 minutes that it took. It was surreal in a way. The hand theatre ward at the hospital is nestled behind the cafeteria, and a seemingly innocuous space I thought. The hand clinic is a really big deal here, weirdly. (We have a friend who used to be a theatre nurse there, and the stories of firework explosions and oyster-shucking involved injuries attest to the need for an entire hand clinic ;-).)

The morning I was there, the surgeon had myself and 4 others scheduled for carpal tunnel surgery within 2 hours. The ward itself encompassed the waiting room ward and post op ward in one space, with tiny little half-mast purple curtains blocking patients from striking up conversations with each other. The anaesthetists, surgeons and nurses all scurried around in pink scrubs and most of them wore Crocs. CROCS. Only one- a very elegant well-chiselled anaesthetist wore black Birkenstocks. It was under his instruction that a younger anaesthetist was given reign to insert a needle into my armpit and spend 10 minutes seeking (and this is tongue in cheek, because the french alluded me) a good transversal median muscle in which to inject the numbing agent. I am not lying when I say that the anaesthetic process to numb my arm took longer to endure than it took the doctor to slice my wrist, cut and staple what needed to, and close it up. The pain with the anaesthetic was pretty awful and I had shooting electrical pains from arm pit to finger tip on more than one occasion.

Eventually they left me in peace and I had to lie there in a blue surgery gown and under a rubber/foil blanket while I waited. After some time I heard a random ‘clunk’ from my bed. I craned my neck sideways to see what had happened, only to discover my arm had fallen away from my body and was dangling like a ripe sausage on the edge of the bed. Completely autonomously. Yes, I did laugh out loud at myself.

I was eventually wheeled into the ‘theatre’ and I use the air brackets because the space resembled an office with a huge ring light over a white desk. The surgeon asked if I wanted to watch what was going on- this was before the nurses draped a theatre sheet over a bar above my arm (like a regular c-section right?), and I was wholly uninterested in watching my wrist being cut into. Needless to say, viewing space was not In Real Time, but actually visible on a screen above my head which I had to roll my eyes aaallll the way back for. Did I watch? Yeah. I did. And do you know what I saw? Adipose fat cells. In my wrist.

Fat cells in my wrists. Of all the weird things that have sprung to my mind lately, it was the name of the tissue that is globulous and yellow in colour. And there it was in my wrist, a part of my body that I feel might actually have the least amount of that tissue. At this point I turned my head to my left wrist and glared at it with a hint of incredulity, and asked myself if THAT part of my body (elegant and almost feline) had fat cells in, WHAT DOES THE REST OF MY BODY LOOK LIKE?

Has it scared me off eating, a fact I considered while gazing at my left hand in almost disgust? Obviously not. Was I overly affected by the anaesthetic perhaps? Mmm. I do think so. And I think this mostly because in post-op where I waited for 25 minutes afterwards, when all the nurses were doing their own thing, and I was lying there, still half naked and climbing into my head a little too deep, I figured it would be as good a time as ever to make sure I was getting mobility back in my arm, and lifted my dead arm from the cushion it was resting on.

Bear in mind that my arm had been numbed from my arm pit and had had zero control of anything from there down. 45 minutes later and post ‘surgery’, my shoulder rotator cuff is actionable at my brain instruction. My actual elbow, however, is not. Can you picture what transpired as I lifted my dead arm in front of my eyes? It crashed own into me. It flopped like a dead weight into my face. And it was incredibly funny too. I laughed. Out loud. To nobody else but me, because there was nobody there to be amused by my hysterical laugh. I don’t laugh at myself. Ever. I find it weird. I may be capable of full on two-sided conversations with myself in my head. But laughing out loud at myself? Nah. Or was this all just a result of me being a little loopy?

In any case, 2 hours after my check in, I checked out with a black coffee and baguette & jam in my empty belly, and was at the mercy of a rather unwelcoming-looking nurse who would need to assist me getting redressed. I had specifically dressed at 5am with the notion that I would not have full capabilities later, so had not bothered with a belt or tight jeans, and instead had opted for yoga leggings, a bra and camisole, and an oversized mens shirt covered by denim jacket and a scarf, and takkies on my feet. The nurse (obviously) offered to dress me, but I drew the line at her putting a bra on me or pulling up my leggings. The leggings were easy enough to pull up with one hand. The cami was pulled up like a mini skirt, and after shoving my bra in my jacket pocket, I called for assistance to get my shirt and takkies on. Yes, this Generation X kid might be swayed by the notion of having confidence in my body shape to just let myself accept myself, but there was no chance an unfamiliar person should/could touch my nearly naked body.

Those, however, are my thoughts written down for posterity, a mere diary entry if I may impose on your time. I’ve regaled them in person, laughing with my kids at these weird experiences. I am home now, for 10 days. My wonderful partner, my husband, Anton, has learned a few extra recipes for his repertoire under my instruction while I gain strength back. The recovery has been quicker than I expected, but the surgery was more delicate than in the past- friends who’ve had it done talk about long scars with a longer healing period. Currently I can hold utensils like knives and spoons- the rolling pin is too difficult and exaggerated chopping is impossible. All in due time!

2 weeks post op already. It turns out that even typing on a computer has put undue stress on my wrist so this has taken longer than I hoped. The stitch is out and I’m officially done with bandages but after being out walking the dog yesterday in the winter cold, I feel like the cold renders a different pain- like an old arthritic witch complaining of feeling ‘the cold in my bones’. I’m still trying to decide if I can align with and assimilate that title, or if it’s just plain old derogatory (but maybe this is just the boredom speaking. There’s a lot of that. I’ve even been down those social media wormholes where I absorb way too much of what other people are like).

I am also trying to muster the desire to get out running again, but the weather has been bleak as anything, so I may just have to focus more on practicing tests of <<La Code de La Route>>– the official theory test to be able to obtain a drivers licence. Now is as good a time as ever to learn for that, but the incredulity of some questions in it are soul destroying. Why, pray tell, would I need to know the difference between disc brakes and drum brakes? I cook for a living. I don’t work on cars. Of course, the important details like how fast am I legally allowed to drive on the highway as a novice- I’m all for learning that 😁, but which hand to use to open my car door with when I exit at a parking? FFS 🤬.

Are you still here? My apologies for the long winded newsletter. It feels a little bit like how I used to write to you doesn’t it? 2 weeks at home with few other conversations has taken its toll. There may be a few other essays up my sleeve.

Nonetheless, let me bid you adieu for now. As always, I hope that you are keeping well, no matter which part of the world this finds you.

Love and wishes

Me.

Xxx