Collar bones, hand bones, ribs, foot bones, cheek bones... it never gets old being able to see bits of my skeleton peaking out at me from beneath my skin!
Today, am I pleased to welcome the latest newcomer to the bone party: the thumb bones. Did everyone but me know that if you look at your hand from the side, with your pinky facing outwards, there are two narrow, visible bones that run parallel to each other, from your bottom thumb knuckle to the side of your wrist?? Well, I didn't! I mean, I should have known about these secret bones because they're just like the ones attached to all my other fingers, but I have never seen them before and never wondered whether they might be there. When I discovered this anatomical breakthrough yesterday, I proceeded to spend at least 5 minutes bending my thumb up and down so that those bones were essentially waving at me. (There's a possibility I'm regressing into childhood, but one problem at a time.) I can't believe how exciting it is to see new bones. Really, any normal/always-been-thin person reading this right now probably has one eyebrow involuntarily raised, the way I might if I were reading someone's blog about the wonder that is the human toe nail: who cares? I CARE. MY BONES ARE COMING OUT OF HIDING. Fat, be gone!
Also from the same neighborhood, I found I can now enclose my wrist between the thumb and forefinger of my opposite hand, whereas I previously couldn't even fit my thumb and middle fingers around my wrist. I guess I lost weight from my wrists/hands last time. Ha! The Where Did I Lose From game, such a party classic.
I'm also seeing ribs. RIBS. My ribs. I can also feel other ones that haven't popped out. I kind of hope my ribs will keep some of the mystery alive forever; I don't really want to see all of them, as they kind of freak me out for some reason and I just start laughing when I catch a glimpse of the ones I can see. BUT, evidence that my midsection is finally starting to go away? Yeah, that works. I'll happily accept. :D
Buuuuut...
The lower part of my body is a bit of a wet blanket on the bone party that the upper part is throwing.
My right knee is doing this strange clicking when I go down stairs (NOT up). It's actually been doing that for about 5 months. It doesn't hurt, but it is unsettling, and I'm wondering whether it might be worth a trip to the doctor. I don't want to end up with damage that makes exercise painful or difficult. Does anyone else have experience with this? I'd love your recommendations.
The second bummer is that damn heel spur I found out about over the summer. It's still there, and over recent days, it has breached the barrier between annoying and painful for the first time. It's started to hurt. When I originally saw my podiatrist about it back in July, he said that if I could live with the annoyance, we shouldn't worry about it as long as it wasn't interfering with my normal routine or causing pain. I'm gonna need to go back and see him, I think. From what I remember from my first visit, the intermediate step towards a solution was a cortisol shot or shots in my foot. (I just felt you cringe, but don't worry, I have a superhuman lack of discomfort with or fear of needles.) If that doesn't solve the problem, there may need to be a surgical intervention. Because my heel is one of the bones I can't see, I have no idea what's going on in there or how bad it is. It doesn't seem extreme enough to require surgery, so I'm hoping to be able to avoid that, but I'm trying to lay a mental groundwork of acceptance of that for myself so I can plan around it and not get derailed from my weight-loss plans if that is the way things end up going. At any rate, my doctor said all those months ago that he had a reasonable expectation that it would resolve itself naturally within a year. Up until now, it seemed like that's what it was doing, but this feels to me like a decisive turn for the worse. Ugh. The irony is, I've actually been doing lower-intensity cardio the last several weeks, AND I'm smaller than I've ever been, so there should be LESS strain on my heel. Yet that has coincided with the uncomfortable sensation. Heel spur, you're drunk.
Anyway, that's what's up with my skeleton. Glad we had this talk.