Where Things Stand

My right wrist repair

Let's just say it's been a wild ride at times.  

Yesterday marked two weeks since I had surgery to repair and reset my right wrist, which I fractured a few days earlier when I took a hard fall on the ice. My orthopedic doctor reset the fracture, pinning it and plating it as needed. When we saw him one week post-surgery, he said that the fracture was far more complicated than the ER x-rays revealed. 

Great.

Surgery brought a pretty stiff cast from my palm to just below my elbow. Its purpose was to keep my wrist totally immobilized for the first two weeks. Let's just say that it fulfilled its duty with flying colors.

Yesterday, I had a two-week check to take off the surgery cast, remove the staples, and recast my wrist.

14 staples marched in a very precise line down my inner arm, from wrist towards elbow.

14.

My doctor wasn't kidding about it being a complicated repair. That was a long incision.

The staples came out quickly and with little effort. The nurse said I could gently wash my fingers, palm, and wrist before the new cast went on.

Heaven is washing your right hand for the first time since the initial break some 17 days earlier.

After the doctor gave the go ahead, the same nurse who had un-stapled me came in to recast my wrist. What color did I want?

I laughed. When I broke my right arm at the age of 10, there was one choice: plaster cast white. Now you had a palette to choose from, although she recommended against choosing white. "It tends to look dirty pretty fast."

Blue. Give me blue. 

I was in a new, blue fiberglass cast in very little time. The new cast is lighter, shorter, and gives me more (a lot more) range of hand movement. While my fingers and thumb have a ways to go (especially my thumb, which is still in shock) before I can use them more easily, life is already opening up. Case in point: I brushed my teeth, albeit awkwardly, with the toothbrush in my right hand, last night. 

Think that is no big deal? You try putting toothpaste on your toothbrush and then brushing your teeth using only your non-dominant hand. No cheating! 

This new cast will be on until the end of March. After everything I have dealt with since the end of August (and still have to deal with on several medical fronts over the next few months), this one has gone well medically and for that I am truly grateful.

Having said that, don't think I am blithely skipping down a sunlit path. I am not a good invalid. I am frustrated by very real limitations on what I can do and sometimes burst into tears when I run into one of them. Warren is doing a magnificent job of taking care of me, but I am not always appreciative. (And I am also all too well aware of the huge stresses on his time right now and, although he truly does not feel this way, I feel I am in the way and adding to his overload.) At my lower moments, I take deep breaths to calm down. At my lowest moments, I restrain myself from throwing something across the room — a bowl of food, a glass. When the immediate reaction (throwing something) passes, I pick my emotions back up and try again. And remind myself that there really is a lot to be grateful.

I am creeping back into writing. I am dictating a lot, doing a little more typing now that I can use one (one) of my fingers — the middle finger — on my right hand to move the process along. (Hmmn. My middle finger. Wonder if that is a reflection of where I am emotionally sometimes or just the easiest and longest finger to use. Yeah, probably that...the easiest one to use.) Handwriting is still a distance away. But closer than it used to be! 

That's where I am at these days. I have lots of time to read. (When don't I have lots to time to read?) Dear friends in the area come over for tea and talk and chuck in where I need help. I follow the exploits of my grandchildren from afar: Ramona just finishing a run in the cast of Newsies through the theater group she is involved with and Orlando about to turn, wait for it, FIVE.  I dictate letters to my friends: not as satisfying as writing by hand (very different process mentally) but we keep the words going.

From friends to books to grandchildren to Warren, I am grateful and rich beyond compare.

My blue cast is just the icing on the cake!

Isn't it pretty?