SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK
I’ve been
seen recently with my arm in a sling, and whenever asked I just explained it
was for sympathy. My wife put a stop to that when she realized some people
thought I was serious. Worse, the people who thought I was really hurt didn’t
give me much sympathy, anyway.
It is true
that I didn’t have to use the sling:
I’m trying to heal up my tendonitis, otherwise known as lateral epicondylitis.
That’s the term I usually use, because it makes people feel bad for me, until
they look it up. I got the condition by throwing bricks off to one side, which
sounds manly until you realize I was only throwing them a few feet.
The irony’s
not lost on me that demolishing a chimney by hand only got me injured after it was all on the ground.
The thing
is, if I don’t move my arm it’s not all that painful, usually. But I’m right
handed, and it’s my right elbow. You don’t realize how much you use an elbow
until you’re not supposed to, so I put the sling on as a way to remind me not
to use it.
That only
works some, because I cheat. The cheating makes it hurt, then I get angry
because I can’t blame anyone else.
So when I
went to the doctor, I asked him how soon this would go away. He replied: “You
might die with it.”
Which is
bad enough by itself, but my mind interpreted his words as “You might die from it”, which cause exactly the
reaction you can imagine it caused.
It turns
out one of the things that can worsen tendonitis is keyboarding, which in the
olden days was called typing, which I do a lot. Now, at work there are three
keyboards and three mouses … mice? … um, hand control devices around my work
station, and two of my six computer screens are touch screens. There are no
duties that don’t involve keyboarding or reaching.
Then
there’s my part time job, which is … well, you’re reading it. I could try handwriting
my newspaper stuff, but considering I can’t write with my left hand, that’s
kind of pointless.
Can you
imagine the editor trying to transcribe my left hand cursive? “I think he wrote
‘All mimsy were ye borogoves’ … stealing
from Lewis Carroll is very odd in a column about home maintenance. Did he get
another concussion?”
I could cut
down on my fiction writing, which at the moment is bringing in just enough
money to pay for the tea I drink while writing fiction. Have I cut down? Well,
I’ve got one book coming out in about a month and another in October, I’m well
into the rough draft of a new novel, and I just started working on a collection
based on my early columns. That last will probably be called: “They Amputated My Elbow, And Other Tales
From A Guy Who Doesn’t Know When To Quit”.
Or maybe something shorter.
It’s go
through some pain or don’t write at all, and I’d rather give up on chocolate and Mountain Dew than not write,
although it would be a close call. So I learned, as people do when a body part
hurts, that I use it for a whole lot more than I thought I did. For instance:
Opening a
bottle of Mountain Dew, which takes two hands. I miss that more than anything.
Tearing
open a plastic bag of anything. Yes, I’m thinking chocolate, although it also
hurts to open less important things, like food and first aid supplies. I
actually have to track down scissors, although my wife would rather I have her
do it because, hey – scissors.
Basically,
grasping for anything or reaching for anything hurts, which isn’t a big deal if
it’s something small enough to get with my left hand. But I don’t use my left
hand, because I haven’t led with my left since my brother beat me up in fourth
grade, and that hurt too. Thus the sling, which is there simply to remind me to
lead with the left again. I’ve also had some success with anchoring my right
hand in a jacket or sweatshirt pocket.
But that
doesn’t get me as much sympathy.
So that’s
my explanation for now, although I’m working on a story that involves something
a bit more interesting. Maybe I hurt it rescuing a kitten from a tree, climbing
Mount Everest (which is silly, because it’s cold up there), or fighting off
whatever female celebrity is popular right now. Whatever else I have to do to
get healed up, I’m not going to give up the writing.
Although if
I have to go left handed for my next book signing, I might rethink that.
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| Me changing breathing air tanks at a fire scene some years ago ... just to show what I looked like when both arms worked. |