Adjusting to the Unexpected

This year has been a reminder of how fragile life is and that you can’t take anything for granted. Having lived through the death of both my parents and then catching COVID a month after my dad died was overwhelming. Little did I know that two weeks after recovering from COVID, I would have to deal with one more health issue that would interfere with my functioning.

On Thursday, September 16th, I fell in the garage and landed flat on my right hand. At first, I thought it was just sore because of how my hand hit the floor. Unfortunately, when I walked into the house, the top of my hand was quite swollen and painful. I canceled my tutoring session and headed down to urgent care.

Regrettably, there was no one to take an X-ray, but they put a splint on my arm and told me I would need to see an orthopedist. They gave me a list of people I could contact. I went and sat in the car and started calling. Fortunately, the first doctor’s office I called had an opening the next day at 10:00. I had to call the office back because of grief brain; I hadn’t written down the location or the doctor’s name. She couldn’t e-mail me, so I had to record our conversation and put it in my calendar.

Between the pain and the grief, I was overwhelmed emotionally. From driving to urgent care, sitting in the waiting room, and the rest of the day, I was either crying or swearing, often simultaneously. Before Mike died, I didn’t swear much. If the f-bomb dropped, you knew I was at the end of my rope. However, after Mike’s death, that was my go-to word. It encompassed my anger; no other word seemed to convey that point. On Thursday, a lot of F-bombs were dropped. I felt like I was in the middle of swirling emotional storms. The people whom I would seek comfort from were all dead. Having loving and compassionate friends was helpful, but there was no replacement for my parents or husband.

Friday morning, I went to the orthopedist to get a diagnosis of my wrist. With my right hand wrapped from my knuckles to my elbow, filling out the required paperwork was impossible. The guy in admissions helped me with electronic forms, and the medical assistant helped fill out the paperwork. The medical assistant was thoughtful, especially when I told her about my year so far. I wasn’t looking for sympathy; I was overwhelmed with emotions.

When the doctor walked in, he looked like someone who belonged in a romance novel, and his name was Doctor Steele, the perfect name you would find in that type of book. He was very thorough in examining my wrist and hand. He said I would need to return in a week so they could x-ray it again. It looked like there was a fracture at the wrist, but because of the swelling, it was hard to tell. Regardless, I would need to wear a brace to immobilize the wrist. He was going to prescribe some medicine for the pain, but they couldn’t reach me because the information was from ten years ago, when Mike was my emergency contact, and my email had changed.

The inability to use my right hand just brought up more feelings of the helplessness I already had from the grief of losing both my parents this year. In a book I had read the year after Mike died, the author talked about thinking you were doing okay with a missing arm, only to realize you were missing that arm that was a part of your life. Now my brain was not only trying to process how to manage the world with my left hand, but also to continue to make sense of the world where my parents no longer existed.

Writing has been a helpful way for me to express and examine my grief. To write this, I had to use dictation in Microsoft Word so that one more thing would not be taken away from me. It took me much longer to do, but I needed that space to express myself. Recently, I started picking up my camera again, which has been hard since my dad died. So now it’s just back to using the camera on my phone to take pictures. I know the arm will mend, and I’ll be able to resume the things I love to do, unlike the grief, which I will just have to live with because I love deeply.