I’m alive…my teenage daughter whispers as she parks and pulls the key out of the ignition. When she drives, I feel my shoulders tense up high and when she weaves through impossibly tiny lanes in Atlanta traffic, I’m physically bracing myself for the worst. This summer, we practice, practice, and practice some more. We take the back roads to the grocery store and the pharmacy and soon we venture out on to the busiest city roads. At some point, I know she needs to make more progress, to explore more roads. I find a driving school with a female instructor and sign her up for classes to give her an extra boost before the road skills test. She needs more.
When I was a tween visiting my cousins in Canada, many years ago, one of my highlights in the summer was rollerblading. I would strap on my knee guards, wrist guards, and elbow guards (no helmet in the 1990’s!) and click and clack on the bumpy sidewalks and zoom down hills. In my rollerblades, I would glide endlessly for what seemed like hours, only stopping to drink from a plastic frozen water bottle. Life was AWESOME.
Last year, I added rollerblades to my Amazon cart. I can’t decide if I should get them or not. There are so many reasons not to. I’m too old. It’s too dangerous. But also, It could be so much fun! It’s exercise! Finally, I give myself permission. I click Buy on a pair for me, a pre-Eid present. The wheels sparkled with red and blue lights. I strapped them on and glided through my kitchen and family room – it felt amazing! It felt like I had gone backwards in time and then forwards again. Two of my daughters see me coasting around and want to try too so I buy them rollerblades as well as pre-Eid gifts. Cue two of them wearing rollerblades almost every Iftar in Ramadan whizzing back to the kitchen to get a cup of water or whatever we needed.
No plates were broken during this time amazingly! My eldest daughter who vehemently refused to buy into the rollerblading phase was known to daily roll her eyes and say I can’t wait for this phase to be over. I would rollerblade along the same flat paths purposefully avoiding the hills, but at some point I just wanted to make progress and go further on the trails to explore. I want more.
I find a rollerblading group and make progress. I learn how to rollerblade down a hill properly with a narrow stance with staggered feet with one foot in the back lifting my right heel to stop. One highlight was being able to go to Piedmont Park and being able to rollerblade with the best amongst the best, hill and braking drills with an coach, coasting through the bumpy paths, down the gentle hills, and feeling the whoooooosh as you glide down a hill and the rush of adrenaline. Being able to glide around with confidence, nod at the other pedestrians, some of who may look at your wheels wistfully like they would like to try, and to give an encouraging smile back, feels like freedom. Magical! Also, the slightest of a hill feels that much scarier and that much faster when you’re on wheels. Atlanta notoriously is full of hills. When I return from roller blading, my legs feel tingling and warm and strong. When I sit down, feeling the good kind of sore, to unstrap my roller blades, I find myself thinking gratefully I’m alive.
I’m practicing drills on a grassy hill. We specifically choose grass so if I fall, it will provide a softer landing. I’m wearing my helmet, knee guards, elbow guards, and wrist guards, but the hill is too high, too fast. I can go down the other hill better, gliding down the green, staying upright until I come to a gentle stop, but this hill I can’t. I try again with the coach, but this time, when I fall, I feel a sharper ouch pain in my wrist. Our time is up and my last fall didn’t feel good, I call it quits for the day. I’m fine. But as I walk back to the car, I notice my left wrist is swelling up. This isn’t good. I tell my teen I’m just stopping at an Urgent Care really quick. The only one nearby I learn when I walk in doesn’t take insurance and I don’t feel comfortable driving to a different location with the swollen wrist.
Upon taking some super expensive X rays, I learn I have indeed fractured my left wrist – a distal radius fracture and a styloid ulna – whatever that means! The timing isn’t great -it’s the day before school orientation and instead of attending the orientation, I find myself in the car on a rainy-traffic-y-day with my husband driving me to an orthopedist to get a cast. I’m supposed to wear the cast for a few weeks and then get a follow up in the next weeks to make sure it’s healing just as it should.
I am told that hopefully it should heal right and there will be no need for surgery (yay!) and at my two week appointment, I walk in optimistic to see and talk about the progress I’ve made, but after my X-ray, the physician’s assistant pulls me to her computer screen and tap taps the image. She tells me that my x-ray looks slightly concerning because something hasn’t healed right, and lo and behold, the next day I am referred to see the orthopedic hand surgeon.
At the consult, the surgeon tells me that given my age, my wrist could be fixed normally. Right now, it’s not aligned and I won’t have full range of motion if I leave it be. Plus, it could give me issues later in life with the joints rubbing together. When they remove my cast to take a look, it looks like I’m waving a cheery wave but I’m not.
Looking down at my lopsided wrist freaks me out a bit, but I try to focus on what the surgeon is saying, and to make the best decision. The window to fix the wrist is tight so if I do want to go ahead and fix it, he can get me surgery on Friday or Tuesday, but I really do need to decide. I take a look at my wrist that is waving hello but I’m not waving & sign up for Friday. When I tell him, that I also have carpal tunnel syndrome sometimes, I have really narrow wrists, he mentions he noticed first thing that I have tiny wrists, and when he’s in there he can fix the carpal tunnel too. My head is whirling because my injury has escalated into something so much worse and I’m going to need surgery?!
The day of the surgery, my nurse is kind and warm. She tells me she needs my autograph on some paperwork which makes me chuckle. I want to tell her I’m a children’s book author too, I can’t remember if I tell her or not. She wraps me in a warm heated blanket and the anesthesiologist tells me that I will be given a nerve block and before that I will be given fentanyl aka the I don’t care drug. I ask him How long have you been an anesthesiologist for? and he smiles and says three to four weeks. I nod and I’m about to tell him, well, welcome to the business because I know what it’s like to be a first-year-teacher, you all have to start somewhere, but then he and my husband burst out laughing, he says I’ve been doing this for YEARS. Maybe 20? But you took that really well! I exhale and chuckle, relieved. By the time I get the fentanyl it’s not just an I don’t care drug, it’s a happy drug. I find myself laughing and telling them that I feel like I’m on a beach in Hawaii. Disclaimer: I have never been to Hawaii or sat on a beach in Hawaii for that matter, but I can imagine it must feel really nice. When they wheel me into the operating room, I see a lot of heads and ask how many they are, but I don’t remember their answer. I then remember again saying, well I feel like I’m on a beach in Hawaii and I remember one of them answering I like those vibes!
There will be unpleasantness to come, but for now I am warm and safe and taken care of. Post surgery, after the nerve block wears off, the day will be rough. I will feel like my wrist is an egg and there is a sharp fork whipping it. The pain medicine will help a little but the pain will still be there, there, always there. It will feel like there is a sharp knife spreading butter on my wrist but instead of butter it’s Pain. Or like there’s a teeny tiny garden gnome living in my tiny wrist stabbing it with a tiny tiny pitchfork. I will ask for, request, demand physiotherapy, and I will make all sorts of faces and try to work through the pain, stiffness, the soreness, and the aches while I try to understand why my wrist doesn’t feel like mine, why my hand is so clumsy, and how I wish to be able to rotate my palm from down to upward like it’s nothing, just a wrist doing what it’s supposed to be doing. I will tell the physiotherapist how I was wearing my wrist guards, how I was on grass, and she will say with a sympathetic smile, You did everything right while handing me a rubber yellow ball to rotate. My teen will be able to drive me to the pharmacy on the main roads so I can retrieve my pain meds. My shoulders will relax low and I will embrace her progress.
As for my rollerblading progress, I’ve heard some words already, don’t give up rollerblading! I hope you get back to it! but an injury like this is not an easy one. The same tender way I gave myself permission to start, I can give myself permission to stop, even if it hurts my heart. I have four children, one of them is a 3 year old. I am the default stay at home mother, the driver of the children, the cook, the cleaner, the list goes on. An injury like this takes a toll not just on me but on my family ( thank you so much to them!!) and I think if I pick up a sport again I just want it to be a safer and easier one. With that being said, I know I could trip walking down the stairs. My new reality is I don’t know if I will feel confident again in my roller blades. I know I was confident on flat surfaces and I could just stick to that, but there’s always the risk. There could be a tiny stick or a stone on the path and I could trip on it, or somebody could bump into me, and I could break another wrist, and I just don’t want that. I can’t bear to think of it or risk it. My future is uncertain.
For now, on the day of my surgery, my surgeon is right. He says We’ll give you some medicine and then when you wake up, you’ll wonder if the surgery is done, and it will be all over. Upon waking up, I peek underneath my blanket and I see a humongous beige bandage wrapped around my wrist and arm. I know that my surgery is done and for now I’m grateful. I’m alive.
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “Permission.”
