Well,back from my latest little hospital visit yesterday.There are not words to express the loathing I feel towards hospitals.This time they've handed me my very own,personal medieval torture instrument and a long-term treatment plan around it's use.

To be fair,it is for my own good,both immediate and long term.Doesn't make it any more enjoyable though.

The tendons in my left hand are shrinking/tightening/retracting and the muscles are wasting,causing clawing of the hand.They have been for some years but over the last two the shrinkage has accelerrated considerably.Without treatment I can expect to lose as good as all usage of my hand within the next few years.Something made all the more undesireable by the fact that I am left-handed.

It all started from my breaking my arm when I was nine.There was a lot of damage,I lost a lot of blood,very messy and painful all round.Added to which it was at a decidely awkward point on my arm,hard below the 'ball and socket' of my shoulder..The surgeon wanted to amputate,he said the damage was so great that the arm would never grow properly anyway and that the best thing was to remove it while I was still young enough to 'adjust'.Thankfully my father put his foot down and insisted that they at least attempt to save it.And probably would have forcibly removed me from the hospital and driven the length of the country,if he'd had to,to find one that would.

Upshot was that he was right and they were wrong.There was the immediate need to operate one way or the other,obviously,and two other,less major,bouts of surgery in the year following.Turned out that not only had I near completely shattered and fragmented that (small) section of bone,but that some of the slivers had sliced through several veins(which wasn't actually that much of a problem) and nerves(which,potentially,was).They patched everything up as best they could,set me on a course of several years of physiotherapy,and sat back and waited,so to speak.But my arm did grow normally.Unfortunately,I didn't get away with it all scot-free.

Within two years they diagnosed arthritus.It was also blatently obvious by then that there had been long-term nerve-damage.My left arm has noticably,measurably reduced sensitivity to both temperature and touch/pressure.Then,in my late teens,the tendon shrinkage began.Or became noticable.Whichever.As it has worsened it has reached the point where my hand claws not only when I am asleep or relaxed in water,but whenever I relax anywhere and often when I don't,when I'm attempting to actively use it.The clawing is rapidly heading towards permanent.

Which brings me to my new,pet torture instrument.It's basically a small row of clamps to be screwed(yes,screwed,I swear this thing is a direct descendant of the thumbscrew)onto my fingers and thumb.These clamps are attached to a framework and mechanism for extending it-the idea being that it gradually stretches your tendons,so reversing or halting or,at worst,considerably slowing the damage.I'm meant to wear it at night while I sleep.Every night.

If this doesn't work,the only thing left will be further surgery.Cutting and attempted extending of the tendons.A path I really would prefer to avoid,if possible.

Tired,depressed and in considerable discomfort.

Want to just slip away into the shadows and disappear.