NOW What?!?!

When Bette Davis said “Old age ain’t no place for sissies,” she was not fooling around.

Pretty much nothing in my entire body works well, and each trip around the sun seems to bring additional issues which really can’t be resolved. Last Monday, I had my annual visit to my primary care physician (who is just one of a cadre of folks who poke, prod, and prescribe on my behalf). I had a couple of things to bring up, in addition to all the things she brought up.

“My finger hurts,” I said. Over the past few years, my hands have become old-lady hands.

Those fingers on the right-hand side are indeed my right-hand fingers. The center finger went off-grid years ago, with a much-enlarged knuckle joint, and that right-leaning twist. It’s a little painful and I cannot make a good fist with that hand, as that center finger refuses to participate in fist-making. Thank goodness I don’t get into fistfights. The other knuckles are rather enlarged, too, but they don’t hurt.

Those fingers on the left-hand side are, as you might have guessed, my left-hand fingers. That index finger turned inward at the upper knuckle a while back. When I hold my fingers close together, the index finger looks like it’s hiding behind the center finger, as though I might be thinking of asking it to participate in some pointing activity that it would rather not be a part of. The center finger’s pretty straight, still, but the problem child is the ring finger. It’s the one that hurts.

I noticed the discomfort a couple of weeks ago, when I was knitting. That finger’s not really an active part of the knitting process, but as I worked and that finger curled and straightened in the whole-hand engagement of knitting, it was painful. The doctor looked at it and was rather alarmed.

She was focusing on the fact that the center joint is quite enlarged, and, in fact, the whole finger is pretty swollen. She moved on down to my rings. “You’re going to have to have those cut off,” she said.

I very rarely take them off, and I don’t suppose I have in quite a while. Weeks maybe. Months maybe. My finger doesn’t hurt down there at the base of it. But, on paying attention to the situation, I could certainly see that those rings were not going to slip easily off my finger.

I guess she noticed how perplexed I was. She said, “Jewelers can cut rings off fingers.”

A couple of years ago, the setting for the engagement ring’s diamond was rough, and I took it to a jeweler for repair. They fixed it, and, as I was rather getting old-lady hands at that time, they resized both rings so that they could more easily slip over the knuckle. (Maybe they could tell it was just a matter of time.)

Wednesday, when I was out running errands, I stopped by the jeweler’s again. I showed them my awfully enlarged knuckle, and, actually, the whole finger is swollen. “My doctor says you can cut this off,” I said.

“Yes,” said the jeweler, but with a furrowed brow and concern in her eyes. She called another employee over. They looked at my finger, and both seemed to agree that it needed to come off right then and there!

I don’t know what I thought that the instrument might look like, but I was imagining some sort of tiny electric saw that would zip right through, all quickly and efficiently.

No. The thing actually looked a great deal like my garden snips, with curved blades, only much tinier. The process is that she put one blade of the little snips between my flesh and the underside of the ring. Then she put the other blade against the top of the ring and held the handles together. She took a deep breath and said, “If I hurt you, I’m very sorry.” (She said that several times.) I said that I knew it was an important process. Then, she began to turn that large handle thing at the top edge of the snips. She cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked. It took a few minutes. It was really painful. She didn’t draw any blood; there was just a lot of pressure on my sensitive, swollen finger.

After she’d finally snipped all the way through the ring, she had to put those plier things inside the ring to pry the edges apart so that she could get the ring off my finger. Also pretty uncomfortable. AND THAT WAS JUST THE FIRST RING!! I didn’t yell, or weep, but it’s just as well that there aren’t any photographs of my face.

Actually, getting second ring off was a little easier. Not lots easier, but a little easier, because it was at the bottom of my finger, where the swelling wasn’t as bad. But, there was still cranking and cranking and stretching and stretching. Now, I have two ring pieces.

“What’s next?” I asked. They said I should wait at least two months to give the swelling time to go down. And then they will put the rings back together and size them to fit. I might have to wear a ring guard. For the rest of my life.

I remember one of my mother’s sisters having a ring guard. Her knuckles were so large that any ring that could pass over a knuckle would have hung loosely at the bottom of her finger. With the ring guard, she would put the ring on, then attach the guard, which would keep the ring snugly in place. We’ll see.