bad break

I fell while skating on November 20th and knew right away I'd broken a finger because it was pointing in the wrong direction. An arduous night at a Waterbury emergency room ended with doctors pushing it back best they could and telling me I needed surgery. I had snapped my right middle finger at the base and broken a joint in the hand.

Two days later a hand specialist put it back together with a graft and two 4 inch pins. In the three weeks since I've had a series of casts, my hand reformed, stitches and pins removed, the beginning of physical therapy, and a lot of pain killers.

I'm a right handed artist, I'm a fainter with a low squeam tolerance, and I've got a doctor phobia from hell. Everything about this situation is what I would have liked most to avoid.

Yet, even though it's a bad break and rotten in so many ways, so much about it seemed to go so right. From the tough friends who stayed by my side that night, to the orthopedic nurse standing next to Karl when he got the call who immediately began arranging my care, to even the left handed scissors I'd accidentally bought the week before. So much was in place it was as if it was planned.

Painting, sculpting, spinning, skating, puppeteering, and blogging were dropped for the constant tending of my hand, and a lot of sleeping and eating. But things are starting to return a little at a time. I've gotten pretty good at one handed typing, so I'll be keeping a documentary of my recovery from hereon. I'll post pictures of my hand, but I promise nothing grosser then this xray (though I've got some real gag inducers for anyone with a sick curiosity.) The goal is to get my hand back fast and complete, as well as shed my squeamishness enough to look at the first xray of the break, which I still can't do.

So onward goes the blog. Onward goes my strange, amazing life.

But no more goddamn fortune cookies.