Oh look who’s back! Yeah, I’m still alive. Or at least I’ve been surviving somehow. Okay, it’s not that bad, I’m just being overdramatic again.
So, what took me so long to update this blog? Has nothing interesting happened in these past months? Well… some things have happened. I have had a life… kind of. There have been weddings and concerts and birthdays and so on but I guess I’m just getting old and tired.
Okay, so I learned something interesting a month ago: it’s really hard to cook or clean or even wash your hair with just one hand. Especially if you have to use your non-dominant hand. How did I come to that conclusion? By being an idiot, of course!
It was a fine Friday morning, the sun was shining, I was full of energy and ready to seize the day. I was at work, ready to start the day on a positive note. I was happy and pretty optimistic because it was a Friday and I was ready for the weekend. And then I fell. I was skipping along, heading to open the door but my legs were too slow to catch up with my body and I managed to faceplant spectacularly. Except that I didn’t really faceplant: my right hand broke my fall. And by broke my fall I mean it almost literally broke it. It hurt like hell. I didn’t even realise how much it hurt in the beginning because I guess the adrenaline was still keeping me functioning but then the swelling started and before I knew it I was in the doctor’s office. By that point the pain was so bad that for a moment I almost blacked out. You know that feeling right before passing out when everything loses colour and you just feel like your whole body is going numb? Yeah, I felt that right as the doctor was taking a look at my hand. Thankfully I was already familiar with it so I knew what was coming and warned the doctor about my imminent collapse. Next thing I knew I was lying down on a couch with my feet up on a bookshelf.
‘So… I hear you go running a lot?’ Asked the doctor who was just trying to keep me conscious long enough for the nurse to arrive with some painkillers.
‘Uh… yeah? I guess.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t go running tonight.’
‘Huh, really? Thanks for saying that because I totally would have gone otherwise. Cause I don’t need to have functional hands to go running…’
‘So you want us to give you a shot for the pain or do you prefer pills.’
‘Pills sound nice. I don’t really feel like adding to the pain…’
‘Too bad! We already have the syringe ready.’
To be fair, the shot was probably a better idea. It was faster and I barely felt the sting of the needle piercing my skin because the pain in my wrist was so much greater. The doctor sent me to the ER without further hesitation. They brought me a wheelchair (although I was fairly certain I could walk without passing out) and drove me to the hospital where I had to get an X-ray of my hand. Long story short: nothing was broken. I'd sprained my wrist so it was swollen and painful but on the other hand I was fine (yes, I am ashamed of that pun... but not enough to delete it). Well, not fine really but the damage wasn’t too bad. The surgeon who took a look at my x-ray just told me to ‘take it easy and get some rest’. I got an orthosis and they told me to be back in a week for a follow up.
‘Make sure to keep the hand elevated and avoid putting too much stress on it. And you should stay home for a week,’ they told me in the hospital
‘Uh-huh… I should stay home?’
‘Yes, that’s what I said. You should stay home and rest.’
‘But I don’t have to, right?’
‘What? Rest?’
‘Stay home. I can still go to work, right?’
At that point the surgeon looked at me like I was insane. Maybe I was. I could tell she wanted to ask me if I’d also hit my head in the fall.
‘Well, what do you do for a living?’
‘I’m a physiotherapist.’
‘How are you going to work with just one hand?!’
‘Like no one else…?’
‘Yeah, you should definitely rest.’
A-ha! But ‘should’ doesn’t equal ‘have to’. So I went back to work on the very same day.
Was it stupid? Possibly. Was it crazy? Most definitely. Why did I do it then? Honestly… it’s hard to answer that question. I guess I felt responsible. It was my own carelessness that brought about the fall. It would have been unfair to my coworkers if I’d left them in a mess of my own making. It was a spectacular Friday in the sense that out of the 7 physiotherapists working in our department only 3 of us were at work and one of them was me... I was worried that things might get out of hand at work. And I honestly felt that despite having only one working hand I could still do my job.
And I could. It wasn’t too bad, honestly. I couldn’t do any heavy lifting and I had to be more careful with my right hand but other than that it wasn’t too bad. I realised soon enough that working wasn’t the problem - everything else was.
Ever tried chopping onions using only your non-dominant hand? Yeah, it sucks. I looked like a blind butcher just hacking away at various ingredients like a madman. Why did I think it was a good idea to get a melon when I knew I only had one functioning hand? Rookie mistake. I got my best kitchen knife stuck in that melon and had to struggle for at least fifteen minutes to get it out. Fun fact: it is surprisingly difficult to keep a melon in place just using your elbow. At one point I realised it was easier to just get a frozen pizza and just not bother preparing my own meals. It’s almost impossible to slice onions with just one hand and lord knows I put onions in almost everything.
Washing the dishes was even worse. I tried in vain to use my elbow to keep my pots in place while I scrubbed them with my left hand. Took me a while and the results were less than satisfactory. Another reason to just stick with frozen food: you don’t need plates or knives or forks to eat pizza. You do need your hands though but one is enough… most of the time.
Now, the first few days were pretty bad but luckily enough I fell on a Friday so I had two days of rest… kind of. On Saturday I had a wedding to attend and my mom was coming over. The first thing she asked when she arrived and was getting her stuff out of her car was:
‘Hey, could you give me a hand here?’
…
‘No. I can not. I don’t have one to spare.’
One good thing about having an injury is that it’s a good icebreaker. You meet someone new, they see your orthosis and immediately ask how it happened. And then you can make up an awesome story about how you stopped a robbery or saved a kitten from a burning building or did some ninja-stuff. Nobody is going to believe you but at least they’ll be entertained. Especially after you finish your story with the truth:
‘No, I was actually going to open a door and I fell… because I’m stupid.’
For almost a week I didn’t have to worry about having a moment of awkward silence with anyone because there was always a topic to discuss. Even people I’d barely talked to asked me about my hand and I got to tell the story about me punching three drunk vandals and hurting myself after a celebratory backflip so many times that I almost started to believe it myself. Almost… Not that anyone bought it but at least I was a bit more interesting for a little while. Apparently there were also several rumours about my fall going around. Some said I fell on the stairs, others knew that it happened on the second floor at work, some said I also hit my head and was rushed into the ER because of brain trauma... I have no idea how these rumours got started but brain trauma would have explained why I decided to go back to work on the very same day.
Another good thing about my injury was that I had newfound understanding for my patients. Whenever one of them started talking abut how difficult it was to get dressed or clean up around the house with just one hand, I nodded and went:
‘Yeah, I know where you’re coming from.’
‘And I can’t even buy shoes with laces anymore! Or shirts with buttons!’
‘Yup, been there. Don’t you just hate that? And don’t even get me started on driving!’
Oh yes, driving. To be fair, I didn’t sit behind the wheel until almost two weeks had passed. By that point I could already use my hand in most everyday activities. It was still sore and weak but it was functional again… until I sat behind the wheel and found out that I couldn’t turn the key in the ignition with my right hand or put the car into reverse. I had to use my left hand for both, which wasn’t very comfortable but I reasoned that I didn’t need to put the car into reverse that often anyway. I reasoned that I could probably manage a small three hour car ride across Estonia at the very least. I did. My dad wasn’t impressed.
In fact, my parents weren’t all that excited about the fact that I was working with an injury. They thought I should take some time off like the surgeon suggested. They were probably right. But I was never one to take sound advice from reasonable people. I’m not known for making rational decisions either. Honestly, sometimes I marvel at the fact that I managed to make it into adulthood.
‘Why are you working right now? You could take some time off and no one would blame you, you know,’ my parents told me when they found out I was still doing my job.
I knew that. I knew I had every right to take some time off. So, why was I working? Because I could. That was the only reason. Because despite having one useless hand I could still manage working and I felt that it would be unfair to everyone else if I’d take some time off because I was stupid enough to hurt myself. I hadn’t broken anything, I could still stand, still use my other hand and I didn’t need to do any heavy lifting. It was just such a small little thing. My arm was still attached to my body and it was getting better every day. So why not work? Why should I act like an injured war veteran when I knew I could do what needed to be done? I didn't have any heavy patients, I could still write my protocols (albeit slowly and with my left hand... my protocols had a lot of typos that week) and I could still be there. So why not? I wasn't trying to act like a martyr or a hero - I just felt it would be irrational to stay at home when I could still do my job. 