otoh

I wrote about scars back here. And yesterday I posted a photo of one of them. So now I’m dragging yet another post out of the experience….

It was the last Sunday in January of my senior year in high school. We had an extraordinary amount of snow that winter. (The schools had closed for two weeks due to the heavy accumulation. We had also closed for two weeks due to a teacher’s strike. But those are other stories….) I went with one of my friends, Jim, to go sledding in one of the local parks.

I use the term sledding rather loosely because most of the afternoon we slid down on pieces of cardboard not on sleds. On cardboard you can go really fast. Steering — not so much. So, on one particular trip down the hill I intended to pass beside a jump someone had built about halfway down. I learned that intentions are a poor substitute for the ability to steer.

The contours of the hill caused me to veer far to the left of my intended path and directly over the jump. Catching a little unexpected air time caught me off balance. Like an idiot (just like an idiot, trust me) I put out my arm trying to regain my balance and my right hand was the first thing to hit the ground. I knew something wasn’t right. I somehow had the presence of mind to grab my sleeve and hold my right arm across the front of me while I slid the rest of the way down on my back. My arm was broken. Specifically, I broke the humerus, the long bone between the shoulder and elbow. (The “funny bone” jokes wore thin really fast.) Jim, who was at the top of the hill, said he heard it pop.

Jim drove me home and my father took me to the emergency room. After standing around for over an hour (still holding my arm as still as possible, I couldn’t sit down) they managed to slide off my heavy winter coat and then cut the shirts I was wearing. The cast went from my shoulder to my wrist. Turns out, I had damaged the radial nerve too so a splint was added to support my hand. I had to sleep sitting up while the cast was on, something I’ve never been very comfortable doing.

The cast stayed on for six and a half weeks. I remember feeling nauseated when it was removed — apparently a pretty normal reaction. I was also a little shocked at how atrophied the muscles had become. I still needed a splint; about half the muscles in my right arm were paralyzed. A few weeks later, I had surgery to remove some scar tissue from around the nerve. Months of physical therapy and wondering whether I would ever regain use of that arm followed. Much of the PT was stretching, but I also had a little battery-powered device that would shock the paralyzed muscles to make them twitch.

Meanwhile, I dropped a couple classes, keeping in my schedule what I needed to graduate. And I learned to be a southpaw. I relearned how to dress myself. My mother modified a few shirts with Velcro closures on the right sleeve because there was no way to get that cast through. I learned to give myself a sponge bath and wash my hair in the sink. (Plaster cast, couldn’t get it wet, you know.) I got to where I could print pretty legibly — a skill that evaporated almost immediately after I got the use of my right hand back. But I never felt really comfortable with that non-dominant hand. [Okay, some of you should skip to the next paragraph right now. Really. Don't read the next sentence -- you've been warned. Try wiping your ass with your non-dominant hand. It just feels wrong.]

I remember the first time I saw the tiniest twitch of movement where there had been none. The doctors and therapists had told me to keep imagining movement, willing the control to return. It seemed utterly futile, but I kept at it. And one day I stared at my hand thinking, “MOVE!” and it did. Just a little. And it took an extraordinary amount of energy and concentration for each little twitch. I eventually regained almost full use — enough that most people don’t notice that it’s not really 100%. That arm is still more sensitive to cold too. The experience was one of those defining moments that stay with me forever. And I have this really cool scar….

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