BIONIC WRIST

I am still responding to all the heartfelt emails I have received after my last blog, Watch Your Step—the one about my sweetie Craig taking a nose-dive in front of our local post office and our visit to the emergency room at U.C.L.A.

Yes I have left you hanging. That is because life as a caregiver (albeit a temporary one), musician, teacher and grocery store shopper sucks up time like my handy Swiffer sucks up dust and yuk.

In the E.R., the young stud resident tries his best to set Craig’s fractured right wrist but a few days later the hand surgeon delivers the lousy news. As he loads the X-Ray images onto the computer screen, we hover behind, craning our necks like E.T. at what is clearly a giant mess in my husband’s wrist.

Two days later he is in surgery, fitted with a cast and sent home with enough narcotics to barely be legal. It’s a tough few days but we are propped up by the support of our friends and our neighbors, cousins who text from thousands of miles away and emails from you.

A couple weeks later we are back at U.C.L.A.’s Orthopedic Hospital, escorted into an examining room with a window view of The Bank of America across the street. I don’t know what it is about me and doctors and hospitals, but when I get placed in a holding cell, er, examining room, the first thing I do is look OUT the window.

This is Craig’s first post-op appointment. Our fabulous doctor, the best of the best, sends in his “trainer doc” first. U.C.L.A. is, after all, an educational institution. So we play along. The resident clicks on the newest X-Rays and immediately exclaims: “Oh…Oh…Oh.” Then he clicks on another view of Craig’s wrist and says it again: “Oh…Oh…Oh Dear.” Only with more intensity and concern. Then he adds the word, WHOA!

So much for the opening act.

craigsxrayJust then the surgeon appears. The resident moves his butt out of the kingly swivel chair and we are given a quick tutorial on how bad things can get… I look at the X-Rays and see a sheath of metal, like a bracelet almost, or a chastity belt for the wrist, with more metal things shooting out of it right and left. The surgeon explains this is a brand new procedure in the annals of hand surgery and my husband is only the third patient of his to get one. He adds, with a slight grin, that Craig may end up in the Orthopedic Journal (or whatever it is called…) We laugh. Sort of. You know, the kind of laugh that really means “you have got to be fricking kidding?

craigswristscar

 

Craig gets fitted with a splint that he can thankfully remove when it’s shower time. And now he can drive. Whoo-Hoo! And appear the first day of the school year (he is a high school social studies teacher).

AND…

He can’t lift anything heavier than an iPad with his right hand. For another six weeks.

UH-OH…

The doc warns him, with discernable gravitas, no lifting buddy, otherwise back to surgery for you.

Craig is playing ukulele a couple days after his surgery.
Craig is playing ukulele a couple days after his surgery.

And that is where we are now. So far so good. My musician husband can play the ukulele in short spurts. And that is sweet news indeed. Thankfully he is a finger-picker and his fingers are okay. Hopefully he will begin physical therapy at the end of September but the process of recovery will be a long haul.

And all this because one sidewalk panel in front of our post office was displaced from it’s neighbor panel by one lousy inch, which caught the toe of my husband’s tennis shoe and sent him crashing to cement earth.

But kindness and good karma are present too. I teach ukulele at a music store in Culver City and the owner does something, or says something and within days, that sidewalk is shaved even-steven, so no one else will get hurt. And because I don’t have time to cook (which is probably a good thing, considering…), we discover Ono Hawaiian BBQ right down the street. And because Craig can’t eat dinner laying down in our bed, which has been our M.O. for like forever, we gussy up the little tile perch near the kitchen sink and have dinner there. Sitting in chairs like normal people. Talking to each other about our day… Instead of chowing down in bed as House Hunters International blares on the T.V.

craigandxraysOh the simple…little…things…that bring such joy and relief into our lives. And I forget them. I forget all the time. Like having two wrists that work. Like being able to drive a car. Or eat Hawaiian BBQ chicken even when I don’t have a coupon. And make music. Every moment there is room for one itty-bitty “thank you.”