I went this morning and got the bandages off my arm. Deborah, the PA, had to give me a couple of minutes to just enjoy the ability to scratch my itchy arm before she could take the stitches out, but she understood.

Dr. Mike McCormick is the best Orthopedic doctor I know. He fixed my mom’s shoulder when she crushed it, fixed my husband’s knee when he tore his miniscus and has now fixed my irritated nerve. He also replaced my friend Cindy’s mom’s knees. And he’s just one of the nicest people and treats his patients with the utmost respect. I highly recommend him.

I have a suggestion for all those agencies out there getting in trouble for using inhumane torture methods. Put the captives in casts (at least both arms, and then if they are really hard cases, both legs, too). Leave them in a hot, humid room for a week or 2. They’ll tell you anything you want if you will just let them out of the hot, itchy devices. They will probably sell state secrets if you’ll just give them something they can reach into the cast and scratch with. There is a bonus if they are prone to the itching reaction in pain meds.

I had ulnar nerve surgery on my left arm last week, where they went in and gave the nerve a new home. It had become unhappy where it was and made sure I knew it. They wrapped my arm in a splint on the back side and then a lot of bandages covering all of it from above my elbow down to my fingers. They also have my arm bent at the elbow and with this splint, there is no moving it or straightening it. It’s amazing how many things I find that I need that arm for.

The first day I was pretty doped up from all the stuff they gave me (including what they gave me to try to keep me from being sick from the anesthesia….it didn’t work.) But I pretty much slept all the rest of that day and night.

The second day I found out that 10 milligrams of pain meds cause me to itch all over my body. 5 doesn’t do it, so the next time I cut back, but for about 4 hours every part of my body itched like crazy. The pain wasn’t bad, so a smaller dose was ok.

Around day 4 the real itching started. I have an idea of where the incision is, and I’m thinking it’s under the back part of my arm where the splint is. Naturally the dr. made it impossible to get to that part of my arm, but in the front there is just a bandage. That part is doing it’s fair share of itching too. So I found that if I’m very careful, I can use the rounded handle end of a skewer and stick it in there and gently rub the itch away. But it has a gap in this rounded end that tends to catch on the bandage and the last time I did it, the thing got caught. I probably won’t do that again.

This is now day 9. I was joking around earlier in the week when I went to the bowling alley for the client Christmas party and everyone was asking what happened, and told them I had my funny bone removed. Trust me when I say that my husband will now verify that this is exactly what they did. My sense of humor has fled and took my patience with it. I think he is ready to go back to work, which is bad because he just go here yesterday.

Tomorrow I get all this stuff off. I couldn’t be happier. I think if it was any longer, I would just be removing it all myself. Trust me, the military could easily use this to get confessions, state secrets and anything else they desire. If I knew where all the treasure was buried, I’d tell you in a second if it would get this thing off my arm!!!

Dictionary.com defines Hero as “a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal: He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child.”

I was reading the paper this morning and saw an article about a  child who was born in India with 4 arms and 4 legs. She was born joined at the pelvis to a “parasitic twin” that stopped developing in her mother’s womb. The doctors were able to remove the extra limbs and organs and did the required surgery to make her body normal.

Great story, I thought, until I got to this part of the story…. ”Lakshmi is a hero,” her doctor said. A Hero? By the definition that she was born deformed and survived a surgery to correct that deformity? I don’t think so. Perhaps he meant to say that she was a brave little girl to go through all that, if she indeed was brave about it. But not a hero.

Years ago when I was little, a hero was really someone who put their life on the line to save someone else. A soldier, a  fireman, a policeman. Everyday people can be heros, too, when they do something heroic. What about the unemployed guy in NY city a couple if years ago who threw himself under a subway train to save a disabled man who had fallen? Now THAT is a hero.

There are many words you can use to honor a person…..an inspiration, a role model, maybe even a champion. But let’s save the hero title for what it’s meant for while it still has a definite meaning. Before long it will be like ‘awesome’ which, now only seems to mean the same thing as ‘pretty cool’.

“We can’t all be heros because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.”   Will Rogers