I had some very minor surgery on my left hand last Tuesday. It was just a little bump at the base of my middle finger, whose genesis was a mishap with a bowling ball probably about 10 years ago when Max was in 6th grade and really into bowling. I first saw an orthopedist about it in 2006, when it was about the size of a grain of rice. He said I had a choice of 3 options: Have it surgically removed (which came with a scary list of possibly attendant risks), live with it , or cure it with the “Bible method.” Did that mean praying it away? No, it meant smashing it with a big, heavy book. After finding out it wasn’t cancer or some other really scary thing, I chose to live with it.

After years of being quite unobtrusive, my little friend chose to assert itself more dramatically in the last six months or so, swelling up to the size of a large pea and getting in the way of any activity that requires gripping an object. I thought about the smashing option, but since I’m left-handed, I quite reasonably feared making matters worse and rendering myself unable to write or paint. So, surgery was the remaining option. Once the procedure was officially scheduled, I still had a lot of nightmares about it, as I have an unfortunate inherited tendency toward hypochondria.

I’m happy to report that all went well, and I’m enjoying learning to do everything with my right hand while I have to keep this on for a total of 2 weeks. I can’t say enough about all the good people at Kaiser, who went out of their way to make me feel comfortable and safe. In these times of scary hospital horror stories, I feel unbelievably lucky to have this health insurance through my husband’s employer. We pay a lot for it, but when you need to have something done, at least you feel you have the option to do it. I can’t imagine what this would have cost if we’d had to pay “free market” prices for it.