Today I'm thinking about phantom limb syndrome and other phenomena of touch.
About a month ago I noticed this little lump in my palm, right below the base of my right ring finger. I lived with it for a week, freaking out the whole time, of course, and finally made an appointment with a hand specialist for a month later--this morning.
During that time I had to learn to live with my little lump. Got a new mouse at work. Started thinking differently about how I distribute pressure and movement around my hand, how I use my fingers and my wrist and how all the parts fit together.
And it stopped bugging me, almost disappeared completely except for a tiny reminder on the tendon in the ball of my writing hand.
So I went in this morning for a consultation with the hand doctor and had my first-ever X-ray. The X-ray technician took X-rays of my right hand in a few different postures, like thumb and forefinger pinched together, the other three fingers fanned out beneath. "You should be my hand model," she said. "Most of these guys don't get it! ...Most of the women don't either, in fact."
So I sat and waited for the doctor, and he came in and felt the lump and said it is a ganglion cyst and that since it's not irritating me right now I could either leave it alone until it starts bugging me again... Or I could get a cortisone injection that will make the tendon casing scar over and not fill up again. Nip it in the bud.
I went for the injection, which also had some Novocaine in it, so my right ring finger and half of my pinky are numb like they dropped off somewhere and I've been at work all day with only 3 working fingers on my dominant hand.
Thus the phantom limb sensation. Or phantom digits, I suppose.
"You can go about your business, but you won't feel anything for a few hours," the doctor said. "Papercuts, hot, cold... You won't feel any of that. So just... be aware."
This has been an intensely weird experience for me, who has never had a surgery or a broken bone or a concussion. Me, who likes to be barefoot and/or naked just to keep my senses sharp, to minimize the buffer between my nervous system and my environment with its endless stimuli. Me, who hasn't taken a painkiller in two years. Me, who types and clicks all day as a basic job requirement, and for whom writing (right-handed) is an identity.
Of course I am also mulling over the possibility that the Novocaine will have a permanent nerve-dulling effect on my fingers, which would be unfortunate and also a very strange scar to carry with me throughout my life. And exploring the possibilities of living with some kind of sensory void. The way I used to ask people I cared about to let me explore their faces with my hands, eyes closed, so that if I ever went blind, I would be able to recognize them.
Touch is a two-way sensation. This is suddenly mirror-clear to me. My fingers feel completely different in texture when they can't feel back. The senseless finger feels like an alien, inanimate object attached to my hand where my really useful fourth finger used to be. But the weirdest part is that it's not inanimate at all. In fact, I'm using it to type as we speak and it still has weight and the tendons are still connected and it still bends and it still grips things. It's just alienation of labor, and I am suddenly strangely aware of the physiological middle man that comes into play with muscle memory and contractions and response to environmental stimuli. I feel like I'm playing the claw game in the arcade.
My mom once told me (when I was like 15, like she didn't think about how dangerous this wise tidbit could be falling into the wrong hormonal teenaged hands) that "Human beings need skin-to-skin contact to survive." And in the current state of my hand I am profoundly struck by the mutual connotations of skin-to-skin contact. Touch creates the most physical connection we can have with anything that is not ourselves, the most tangible, the most visceral, the most real. And to share that connection with someone creates the intimacy of shared space, of intermingling, colliding surface atoms. Poetically, the blurring of boundaries between two separate entities to confuse their separateness.
So touching ourselves is reflexive and similarly intimate and important in establishing our individual wholeness. (Yes, some erotic undertones intended.) And when I can't mutually intermingle the atoms of my separate fingers, the wholeness of my hand becomes confused. This is why check-ins, and goodbye kisses, and hello kisses, and hugs are so important and keep us all from falling apart.
I'm arguing for a literal interpretation here.
About a month ago I noticed this little lump in my palm, right below the base of my right ring finger. I lived with it for a week, freaking out the whole time, of course, and finally made an appointment with a hand specialist for a month later--this morning.
During that time I had to learn to live with my little lump. Got a new mouse at work. Started thinking differently about how I distribute pressure and movement around my hand, how I use my fingers and my wrist and how all the parts fit together.
And it stopped bugging me, almost disappeared completely except for a tiny reminder on the tendon in the ball of my writing hand.
So I went in this morning for a consultation with the hand doctor and had my first-ever X-ray. The X-ray technician took X-rays of my right hand in a few different postures, like thumb and forefinger pinched together, the other three fingers fanned out beneath. "You should be my hand model," she said. "Most of these guys don't get it! ...Most of the women don't either, in fact."
So I sat and waited for the doctor, and he came in and felt the lump and said it is a ganglion cyst and that since it's not irritating me right now I could either leave it alone until it starts bugging me again... Or I could get a cortisone injection that will make the tendon casing scar over and not fill up again. Nip it in the bud.
I went for the injection, which also had some Novocaine in it, so my right ring finger and half of my pinky are numb like they dropped off somewhere and I've been at work all day with only 3 working fingers on my dominant hand.
Thus the phantom limb sensation. Or phantom digits, I suppose.
"You can go about your business, but you won't feel anything for a few hours," the doctor said. "Papercuts, hot, cold... You won't feel any of that. So just... be aware."
This has been an intensely weird experience for me, who has never had a surgery or a broken bone or a concussion. Me, who likes to be barefoot and/or naked just to keep my senses sharp, to minimize the buffer between my nervous system and my environment with its endless stimuli. Me, who hasn't taken a painkiller in two years. Me, who types and clicks all day as a basic job requirement, and for whom writing (right-handed) is an identity.
Of course I am also mulling over the possibility that the Novocaine will have a permanent nerve-dulling effect on my fingers, which would be unfortunate and also a very strange scar to carry with me throughout my life. And exploring the possibilities of living with some kind of sensory void. The way I used to ask people I cared about to let me explore their faces with my hands, eyes closed, so that if I ever went blind, I would be able to recognize them.
Touch is a two-way sensation. This is suddenly mirror-clear to me. My fingers feel completely different in texture when they can't feel back. The senseless finger feels like an alien, inanimate object attached to my hand where my really useful fourth finger used to be. But the weirdest part is that it's not inanimate at all. In fact, I'm using it to type as we speak and it still has weight and the tendons are still connected and it still bends and it still grips things. It's just alienation of labor, and I am suddenly strangely aware of the physiological middle man that comes into play with muscle memory and contractions and response to environmental stimuli. I feel like I'm playing the claw game in the arcade.
My mom once told me (when I was like 15, like she didn't think about how dangerous this wise tidbit could be falling into the wrong hormonal teenaged hands) that "Human beings need skin-to-skin contact to survive." And in the current state of my hand I am profoundly struck by the mutual connotations of skin-to-skin contact. Touch creates the most physical connection we can have with anything that is not ourselves, the most tangible, the most visceral, the most real. And to share that connection with someone creates the intimacy of shared space, of intermingling, colliding surface atoms. Poetically, the blurring of boundaries between two separate entities to confuse their separateness.
So touching ourselves is reflexive and similarly intimate and important in establishing our individual wholeness. (Yes, some erotic undertones intended.) And when I can't mutually intermingle the atoms of my separate fingers, the wholeness of my hand becomes confused. This is why check-ins, and goodbye kisses, and hello kisses, and hugs are so important and keep us all from falling apart.
I'm arguing for a literal interpretation here.
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