Aight, so update on the thumb situation.
Doctor says that what most likely happened is that I strained the tendons in my hands by a lot, essentially bending both of my thumbs back way more than my tendons are meant to handle. And that overusing my tendons has likely kept my hand from healing up quite as well as it normally would have over the month and a half or so that my thumbs have hurt..
That being said, the probability of permanent damage is very close to zero, and unless something very weird has happened everything should heal up normally.
Doc’s healing time estimate is a week or two.
During the healing time, I need to wear a thumb brace while asleep and take a pill to help reduce inflammation. Luckily, I only need to wear the brace while asleep, and not awake - meaning I can basically resume schedule as usual next week. The thumb brace is a bit uncomfortable, but considering the fact that yesterday I was worried there might be permanent damage or something, I think I got off pretty darn lightly. And I only need to wear it while asleep.
For tomorrow’s schedule, there will be a slightly shorter than usual budding scientist update (for patrons, at least. For public, obviously, the chapter was written a while ago, so the chapter in three weeks will instead be a bit shorter), but NO Markets and Multiverses update tomorrow.
The way I usually write a Market’s and Multiverses chapter is by writing the first draft a day in advance, and then editing the previous day’s draft before posting it. This gives me a bit of time away from the chapter to think about whether there are better ways to set up for the next plot point, any details I meant to include but forgot, any details I don’t think belong in the draft and should maybe be part of a future chapter, etc, and also gives my beta reader time to look at the chapter. Having the first draft of a chapter done the day before I post the chapter is pretty important to my writing process.
And I’ma be 100% honest, yesterday, when I should have written Friday’s rough draft chapter, I was kind of an anxiety wreck. I was worried about permanent thumb damage, and flipping back and forth mood-wise, and I didn’t really get much done for the MaM draft that day. I believe I got like six sentences down? Which is not a completed first draft. It’s, like, a paragraph. When I posted about this week’s prospective schedule on Monday, I seem to have somehow overlooked the effect my state of mind would have on chapter production by just a bit. So no Friday MaM update. But by next week, things should be back to normal as far as posting schedule goes, and within a week or two of wearing my annoying brace and taking the anti-inflammation medication, everything should hopefully be healed up. If it isn’t, I’ll need to go back to the doctor and ask what’s up, but hopefully this is the end of this.