Suit of Armor

Around month 3 of my pregnancy, I woke up to find that my right hand was numb. I figured that I was probably laying on it funny and didn't think much of it. Then it happened every night for a week, and I began to get worried. I was thinking of a friend of mine whose mother had a major tumor wrapped around her heart; the first sign that something was wrong was a numb hand, which turned into a numb arm. As a nurse, I can tell you that the freakiest diagnoses begin with symptoms that most people would pass off as "probably nothing." Read in the chart of someone with flesh-eating bacteria, and you will discover that what first brought them to the doctor was "flu-like symptoms." Seirous brain infection? "Flu-like symptoms." Oh, and if anyone is still concerned about swine flu, you need not be worried unless you have....you guessed it, flu-like symptoms.

So I didn't have flu-like symptoms, but a persistent numb limb caused me to think, albeit briefly, about tumors and neurological deficits. I was ecstatic when I woke up one day and found my left hand to also be numb. Aha! No tumor. This was not affecting one side, but now both were leaving me unable to hit the snooze button with dexterity.

I thought about bringing this problem up to my OB, but I was convinced that I would be met with looks of "how the heck should I know?" and a proposal that I was simply sleeping on my hands funny. As I began to think about possible causes, I came up with a weird but plausible theory. If everything swells in pregnancy, wouldn't it make sense that nerves may be impinged, causing numbness? Out of doubtful curiosity, I looked up "numbness" in What to Expect When You're Expecting. And there it was: carpel tunnel. I was completely right. Go me.

In asking my practitioner how often I should be wearing wrist braces, she suggested a nighttime routine. Which would take some planning, as I was already supposed to be wearing compression stockings at night also. There was no way I was going to be able to maneuver those things on my tree trunks with a pair of immobilized wrists. "Just think of it as suiting up in your armor," my practitioner said.

Nurses can be some of the worst patients when it comes to compliance. For a long time now, I have made peace with the idea of not looking cute when going to bed, so it's not out of wanting to look pretty that I fail to don all four pieces of armor before I slumber. And I should interject that this is a big step for me: when I was little, I was always hesitant to wear pajamas that I didn't like, in case our house caught on fire in the middle of the night and a strong, handsome firefighter had to come and rescue me. I just wouldn't be able to live with myself if he rescued my damsel self wearing pajamas with a giant clown face on it. (Nobody can argue that the dramatic in me started at a very early age.) Anyway, being married now has curbed my rescue-fantasy complex, and being married for 2 years has assured me that Michael will still love me whether I'm in clown pajamas or compression hose with wrist braces.

But have you ever tried to pee wearing wrist braces? Let me be more specific: have you ever tried peeing 6 times a night wearing wrist braces? It's just not happening. And so I continue to write, shaking out a heavy, numb hand every paragraph or two.