I’m getting there!
March 30, 2009 | Just thinking out loud
Sling is off. I’m typing two-handed. I can move my left arm, as long as I stay in the karate-chop range. I still have my figure-8 brace. It’s been washed a few times and yet it still looks dingy, kind of the I’m-stuck-in-your-armpits-24/7 look that laundry soap won’t touch.
The bone has settled and it sticks up, though doctors promise it will one day be a nice little round bump instead of the branch-like quality it has now.
I can even sleep in a bed, which is Heaven. Unless I accidently turn over in my sleep, then it becomes that other place.
Four weeks and two days. I’m healing way faster than was first anticipated. And I’m grateful.
My mom usually says things like this when bad things happen. “We need to be thankful, Suzie, because somewhere there is someone whose face got torn off”. She’s right, I know.
But that’s not why I’m thankful.
I’m thankful because I took my left arm for granted, and now she’s coming back to join the team. I won’t take her for granted again. I can’t raise my arm high, and my shoulder makes a sound like a shotgun when I try, but taking a shower and semi-fixing my hair (it’s not as good as Richard does it) and putting on my own clothes is a blessing.
Physical therapy has been like a spa. Lots of people told me that it would be the most painful thing I’ve ever done. (People tell you lots of stuff when you get sick or injured.) But somehow I picked the non-painful guy. Three times a week I have PT. It begins with a dark room lying on a nice, hot pad on my back and shoulder. It’s heavenly. Then they do an ultrasound wave therapy on my back and shoulder. Again, I’m almost certain I hear angels singing.
Then the physical therapist takes my shoulder and for a half hour he gently works every part. “I’m asking it to move,” he says. “Not forcing it.”
Sure enough. He asks it to move after he’s through and it moves an inch or so higher.
I’m truly sorry to write so much about a collar bone, but that first week I scoured the Internet for stories. I needed to know. So maybe there’s some poor soul out there whose collar bone is jutting out of his neck and he’s doing the same.
If that’s you, I hope this is helpful to you. It will get better. Do what the doctor says. Stay still. Don’t be hating the brown chair. It will help you sleep and keep the collarbone right where it’s supposed to be. I know the sling is a pain, but it will soon come off. And that nasty figure-8? Eventually it will come off, too.
I believe that. I really do.
Picture is of me and my niece, Kimberly. I was in Dallas at CBE and having some down time at my daughter, Leslie’s. Kimmy lives in CO, but was in town so we hung out. She just had knee surgery. We were cheesing it for the camera.
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