Sticks and Stones

The weather here in Kansas has been ridiculous, of late. It's currently February and the weather was in the 60s today. It's been above 40 all week. In fact, I think it's been above 40 for like a month now. Not that I'm complaining (not really) as I am not missing the typical icy death trap that midwestern winters tend to be. But it's weird. And all the crazy fluctuation in temperature is taking its toll on my body. Ugh. Not only do I have this weird lung-y cough rasp thing going on (that I've had for over a month now.. Full disclosure, it would probably be a little better if I quit smoking...) but my old injuries are all flaring up with a passion. Double ugh. I should explain. While I'm not the klutziest person you'll ever meet, I'm still pretty high up there. I move with all the grace of a drunken walrus. That being said, I get hurt A LOT. Now, lots of my friends have all sorts of sports injuries, and extreme sports injuries that they acquired doing intensely physical activity. I don't have those kinds of injuries. (If we're talking in terms of Lord of the Rings characters (because that's how I describe EVERYTHING) I'm the fat hobbit Samwise minus all the rope climbing and misadventures in Mordor. Suck it, Gandalf. I'm staying home where there is beer and pipe weed and laziness to take care of. I feel for you, Frodo, I really do, but I got 99 problems and that ring ain't one.) I have the kinds of injuries that battered housewives make up to explain the bruises. The kind that don't sound believable. Go me. Just to explain this in detail for you, I'll run you through the list of a) what currently hurts, and b) what I did to screw it up in the first place.

Ahem...

LEFT ARM (And bonus: Right ribs!)


Source of Injury (-ies): Carpeting, Pickup truck, Seatbelt


This one is a two-parter. When I was seven, I went to a roller skating party. Yes, the fat hobbit went skating. How ill-advised I was... Now, I got through the thigh-clenching terror of wobbling across the laminate floor, terrified of falling and being passed by toddlers part just fine. Then I stepped off the slippery death floor of the skating rink itself and moved to the nice, soft carpet that flanked the area. And then bit it, HARD. I was seven, so a lot of this is constructed from my mother's memory and not my own, but bear with me. I suppose I must have hit a wrinkle in the carpet, or just lost my ever-present poise (can you sense the sarcasm there? Cause I meant it.) but regardless of what happened, I went down like the titanic in a sad, sad way. Now, I'm not sure how I managed this, but the best we can figure, I landed, braced on my left arm, but the momentum from my fall caused me to keep moving a bit. The impact plus quick turn equalled some lovely crushed carpal (wrist) bones, and one snapped radius. Good times. (Ok, the story really ends there, as far as why it's bothering me now goes, but the rest is worth noting in parentheses. When we realized it was broken, the manager MacGuyvered me up a splint, using a piece of cardboard, a skate lace, and some white cloth medical tape. We got to the hospital, they took off the tape to cast my arm, and, SURPRISE! I have a severe skin allergy to white cloth medical tape! Yay! So as if traditional casts aren't horrendously itchy on their own, add a scathing skin rash underneath it. Four months of pure, itchy hell, I tell you. Anyways, yeah. Not relevant to the issue at hand, but still an exciting addition.) Bringing my current tribulations into this, my wrist and arm have been a handy barometer ever since, aching like crazy at the slightest shift in temperature. Naturally, I'm all kinds of achy right now. But to compound it, we have part two!

When I was 20, I got in a car crash. Not my fault, some idiot ran a stop sign and I t-boned him. He was completely fine, I totalled my beloved pos car and a few body parts. My right ribs got a lovely snap thanks to the seat belt, but my left arm flew off the wheel in the impact and smacked real good into the doorframe. I re-broke one of my wrist bones, and fractured the top bone in my ring finger and acquired a lovely break in my 5th metacarpal (Handbone. Specifically, my break was a boxer's fractuer, right in the knuckle.) Since my wrist was already pretty much just gravel in meat casing to begin with, and my hand was swollen and purple, they casted me from the elbow down, with a brace on my ring finger & pinky to keep everything together. A few months later, cast came off and the whole arm has been a quagmire ever since. I have an interesting time moving my pinky (and for a writer/pianist, this is super fun) as more than a few minutes of movement and it starts to seize up and refuse to flex. My wrist healed weird, and, as a result of an error in how it was casted, my ulna (arm bone... Connected to the wrist bone.. wrist bone, connected to the... you get the idea) shifted forward by just enough to restrict the movement of my hand, a bit. (My doc called this "ulnar varience," which sounds like a bitchen name for a rock band, but is not so fun to live with.) So I have some super bizarre, but luckily not life altering, complications with my whole left arm, now. Back to the excitement it brings me in times of rapidly shifting weather, the fracture in my knuckle will actually catch at times, causing me to have to perform what I consider a manual reset, meaning I have to physically move my finger back into place so it will bend properly. This is extremely hard to explain, but let's just go with, it is painful, annoying, and seemingly permanent. So, that's the left arm... Moving on....

LEFT ANKLE


Source of Injury: Doormat, Masked children


This one is my proudest moment as a klutzy idiot. It was Halloween, 2001. I was 15. Literally the first trick-or-treaters showed up to my parent's house and I stepped out to give them candy and- DESTROYED my ankle. How, you ask? Remember the doormat I referenced as the source of this one? Well, the mat in question was one of those outdoor peat moss lookalike mats that everyone had. It was about an inch thick. The problem with it was, it liked to skid across the concrete stoop. On this particular day, it was situated halfway across the doorway, so its edge was front and center. I stepped down right on the edge, put all of my weight down, and my ankle kicked out sideways over the side. KRACKENBLASTSQUISHGRUNTMOANAGHHHHHHHHHHH (The sound it made is indescribable, yet, unforgettable. *shudder*) Needless to say, I was hurting. It immediately swelled up to almost twice its normal size and was completely useless. The hospital informed me that I had torn the muscle and strained the ligaments, but, miraculously, not broken the bone. The bad news? Sprains and tears hurt much worse than broken bones. A circulation restricting air cast and a pair of crutches later and I was good to go with my now evil ankle. Ever since, it's been a snap-crackle-pop kind of joint and likes to pretend it's going to quit working if I walk any further than about a half mile on it. (Not for lack of trying, mind you. I was in band. I got around.) And, with all my lovely misadventureing since, it gets tight and achy when the weather changes. Yay.

SCIATIC NERVE


Source of injury: 4-wheeler, Rock, Newton's laws of gravity


This one is a little unfair to blame on the weather, since it hurts in rain, sun, snow, sleet... It's a lot like the mail. It's there through it all. When I was 19, we went to visit my cousins in Vegas. And then, promptly left Vegas to go up to my family's property in the mountains in Utah. While up there, my cousin convinced me to get on one of their 4-wheelers and try taking it out for a ride. (We've talked about me and anything resembling a sport.. Don't do it!) Having never driven a stick before, I decided that, of course, I could drive something with a manual clutch. Sigh. When will I learn? I was halfway up a hill, stalled, and was trying to restart the damn thing, when I lost my balance and pulled an unintentional wheelie, knocking me flat on my back, only on a lovely rock. Tons of pain, screaming, crying, yada yada yada. (It was very dramatic... I laugh about what a nancy I was.) Get home, get to a doctor, and, diagnosis: Congrats! You've permanently damaged your sciatic nerve! You can now look forward to the following: Almost constant pain! (But not enough to be on the good drugs.) Occasional shooting pain that arcs from your middle back all the way down your leg! Occasional (but extremely temporary, thank god) loss of the ability to stand on said leg! And the inability to be comfortable almost ever. So, yeah. As stated, not a weather related flare up, but a constant (literal) pain in my ass from now until forever. Sigh. And no, it doesn't really stop me from doing much. But it makes day to day movement that I used to take for granted a painful experience. Standing up from almost anything is tricky as turning the wrong way can cause a flash of pain to shoot down my leg and cause the leg to go on strike for a minute. And occasionally, it just goes batshit crazy and decides to cripple me. Then I'm in a living hell until it works out it's daddy issues (I assume that's what causes nerves to flare up, maybe I'm wrong) and decides to allow me to walk again. But, it is what it is. I can walk, I do manage, and (sadly enough) I've gotten used to being in pain. What fun life can be.

I suppose that will do for my whining today. Join me next time when I promise to talk about something light and fluffy. Like my Cats! Or video games... Mmmm... Video games...

Much love, nobody!

--A