Last year, I had my final exam and my birthday on the same day. To celebrate both occasions, I decided to buy myself a bicycle. The next day, while test-riding a brand new mountain bike, I fell and broke my arm.
I was zipped to the emergency room by some good Samaritans, expedited through the surgery schedule, and back at my flat recovering in a matter of days. You couldn’t ask for better service.
It’s now a year later, I have two titanium screws in my elbow (am I the bionic woman?), and am disappointed, or perhaps confused, by how much this broken arm is still, well, broken.
I thought broken bones, like polio or mumps, were something we defeated a long time ago. How many of your friends did you watch, growing up, break their arms or legs? We signed the casts, drew pictures on them, knocked the plaster against hard objects to test its strength–and all the kids popped out again in a few months with perfect, if shrivelled, new limbs. In short, I never worried much about my arm because I assumed that after healing from this break, it would be just the same.
It isn’t. I measured it this morning, and its more than half an inch smaller than my other arm. It still has trouble opening doors. I’ve lost about 15 degrees from its range of motion, and I won’t ever see most of that back. This weak limb is my daily antagonist–an arm-impersonator that sent my real arm packing.
I know the usefulness of physical therapy; it brought my arm back to motion after it had been locked for several days. It slowly expanded my reach, and helped me regain strength. But I still miss that old arm–the one that didn’t lock, click and pinch.
After the surgery, my hand swelled up to ten times its size. With yellow iodine still streaked across its skin, it earned the moniker “toad hand”. That’s the arm I still have. And it’s sticking around, as far as I can tell. So I guess I’m off to the gym to see if my toad can be persuaded to behave a little more like a prince.
Image credit: guppiecat