2 posts tagged “eek”

Hey, so I'm a little concerned here. My wrist appears! to be broken. By appears I mean there is all the proof but for the x-rays which come in tomorrow. It certainly hurts like a bitch. And given that it's been broken three times before, and that I spent six hours throwing last weekend, I'm not very surprised. And by throwing I mean as in clay on the wheel, not as in big rocks at stupid people (which I would enjoy as much as any sort of throwing).

Anyway, I was taking it easy until I went to the doctor, who was young and very much in like with himself, and very fancily told me about how after one damages the wrist joint there is all sort of "degeneration" and I'll basically have this problem forever and he's sorry to tell me, but basically I can never have my wrist back and he is "sorry he had to tell me this". Dude, it's not cancer. I'm not dying. Why are you so smug? He did a lot of examination mumbling things "to himself" like "yeah, yeah, there is definitely damage here... hmmm that's not good...". I wanted to slap him and tell him he is definitely not getting laid otherwise he wouldn't feel superior telling me bad news. Only people that don't get laid do this shit.

And it does suck, of course, I'm not saying it's all kittens and sunshine, because it means pottery is out of the question for some time, which really does upset me a lot. Pottery is my happy place. On the other hand, maybe it's a break I should take advantage of and sign up for Arabic and Math instead, which I've been meaning to do for some time. My hand is in a brace right now, and I already realize how much more uncomfortable I'm going to be with a full cast. I can barely type (pain), it's impossible to use the mouse with my right hand (pain, brace in the way), I can't turn faucets or even bottle caps, it's hard to drive, washing dishes is a bigger pain in the butt, I can't scratch my left side, etc etc. But, having done this three times before in a much less mature stage of my life I think I can handle it just fine this time around. (if I can't the next post is going to be super whiny)

So how am I supposed to do anything when two out of four people in my office are out today, and one of them is my boss? Really, I am sitting here looking at my desk, looking at my email, and nothing is registering. I don't know if it's because today is Friday, or because nobody is here, but I'm having problems typing even this without getting distracted by things like why are my earrings on my desk i don't need this email I'm going to delete it and what is that taste in my mouth oh I'm eating a candy.

In other news, something is wrong with my wrist. It's been hurting for a while now, and I wonder if I broke it again. This is the wrist that I broke three times. The first time I didn't notice that it had been broken, it just hurt for a while, a really dull persistent pain. I was the girl who climbed trees and played "war" with boys, not the girl who played dress-up or thought it was fun to make cookies with sand. So, I wasn't bothered that my wrist hurt, only concerned that if I told my mom that it hurt I would be banned from boys. My mom saw one morning (to my shock and awe) that I was holding my spoon funny, due to the fact that my wrist had swollen up so big it was as wide as my palm, and was bent at a funny angle outwards and up. Weird morning that was. After the x-ray, we found out my wrist had been broken in two spots and grew together wrong (in the wrongest possible way, of course) and needs to be broken again and I will be in a cast for three months (instead of four weeks that I would have had to endure had I got to the doctor right away). The horrible swelling was caused by muscles having to readjust and regrow into this new angle and had I waited even another week I would have had to have surgery.

Lesson was learned, or so it seemed.

Wearing a cast for three months was NOT FUN. I'm not talking about the pussy American casts that are so technologically advanced your hand actually functions better when in them... I'm talking about Ukrainian Soviet-style, hard-core, plaster/sand casts, that weigh a few kilos and basically it looks like your arm is stuck in a humongous white cannon. Wearing that cast... fuck, those were months of itchy hell, months of not being able to turn faucets on, eating and writing with my left hand, and everything from dressing to showering took about fifteen times more time than usually. Oh, and I should mention that this cast could not get wet. So, showering meant a very complicated wrapping of plastic around the cast with one hand. Oh, and maybe I should mention this was summer and it was hot and sweaty.

The second time I broke my wrist I actually noticed that it happened, partially because the broken bone actually cut through the skin and I was bleeding, and partially because it was very dramatic - I tripped on the carpet and fell right in my own home. I should mention that the tripping was caused by the fact that my tailbone was broken, so I was pretty clumsy. And the reason I broke my wrist and not my head was because I was trying to break my fall with my wrists to make sure that my broken (almost healed at that point!) nose is not broken again. I had a fun childhood, can you tell?
At that point, it didn't really matter if I had a third broken thing on my body. Fuck the heavy itchy arm cast, the MONTHS OF NOT BEING ABLE TO SIT AT ALL made me extremely resilient to any sort of physical challenge. Sitting is so overrated anyway. So is breathing through your nose. And writing with your leading hand. My best friend in those months was the toilet, where I could SIT because of the donut-shape, at the same time resting my casted broken wrist on the little shelf, my back against the tank and prop up a book high enough in my view that I could read it over my nose clips. This is me at eleven. Reading in the bathroom since then has become one of my favorite activities.

The third time I broke my wrist was not overly dramatic, probably because breaking my ankle and ALL of my toes was a lot cooler. We didn't even notice the weird angle of the wrist until we got to the hospital, because we were all fascinated by all the ways my ankle could bend without the impediment of bones, and how funny my toes looked shattered and bleeding. Ever seen a "toe-cast"? No, you haven't, because there aren't any. The ankle cast extends past your toes and that's it. They set the toes straight, tell you not to try and move them, and put little plastic bands to make sure they don't get moved out of shape again. Then, you just hope really hard that the little bits of bone form back into a straight line.
Oh, I probably should mention that this happened when we were having a "jumping off the swing contest" with "the boys" where you swing and swing and swing and then when you are at the top you slide out and jump down. Whoever jumps from highest point wins. Needless to say, me and my friend Andrei were the first two to compete. Yes, of course he got hurt, too. He shattered his knees (what a smart way to fall) and dislocated his hips. They were not able to put one the hips back to normal until three years later because of complications.

I've had my fair share of broken bones and I really hope I am not about to have another cast experience. The only consolation is that this time the doctors will not be mean to me and I won't have an itchy sweaty heavy plaster cast.