yesterday was freedom day for my thumb.  It is no longer cast-bound, or bound
at all.  Boy does it really feel good to be able to move the thumb and wrist
and to wash and look at the nicely healing incision and all of that.  I
really feel for Kate with all of her time healing from her major
wrist/arm/thumb injury!

Interestingly, he did not send me to hand therapy because he thinks they
might work the joint too much!  he want me to focus on moving the other thumb
joints a lot and only work the MCP a little.  Says it'll give me less trouble
ultimately if it's a bit stiff.  As he's the one who's seen the joint up
close and personal, I'll believe him.

the bad: today I had a call-back appointment with my RD because he didn't
like something in my labs 2 weeks ago.  (I'm racking up the medical miles -
230 in 2 days!)  turns out my albumin's been dropping for a while and
steadily low for several months, even though all my liver enzymes are fine.  
I'm off the mtx for now and his office is scheduling a liver biopsy to see if
there's any liver damage.  I see him again in a month to go over the biopsy
results and plan where we go from there.  sigh..........

on the slightly less bad side, there is a radiologist in Petoskey who's been
doing transjugular liver biopsies for a while now.  My RD has referred the  
patients who needed biopsoies for the last few months to him with very good
results.  He says the patients remember nothing (yea!).  I did some web
research on these and apparently they are usually reserved for patients who
meet certain criteria, which I don't.  Either that's changed, or his office
is good at convincing insurance companies if this is what they've been doing.
I'll leave it up to them.

unfortunately, this means ANOTHER 160 mile round trip to where this
radiologist is, in addition to the 170 mile RT back to the orthopod in a
month.  I've been feeling really bummed about having to do this and I think
part of it is the logistics of doing all of this in our area.  We are getting
to know the route between here and Petoskey far better than we ever expected.
And this biopsy is another thing Mike will have to drive me for, though
maybe he'll let me drive myself back for the next thumb check.  (he's been a
bit protective of late, heehee)

sigh......... I'm kinda amused at myself, telling all of you, but not telling
my family in Florida yet!  I wondered about that until i realized you all
understand this whereas my family might worry a lot.  Presumably, if there is
something going on, getting off the methotrexate will fix my liver right up -
we hope.  I just didn't want to deal with something more at the moment.