We are still in somewhat of a psyche-scrambling whirlwind after the events of the past has-it-not-even-been-two-weeks. One of the many side effects of such turmoil is this lite, 20 % less filling blog post. [1]
My FIL’s death was just one of the Sad Events ® either mentioned or alluded to in last week’s post – events that have left us feeling pulled in various directions and emotionally and physically drained, to be tastefully understate the situation. None of us– us being my immediate family – will be attending tomorrow’s funeral for MH’s father. The funeral service will be held where his late father and mother [2] lived/live, which is some 3000 miles southeast of us as the crow flies. [3]
We have the understanding, love and support of MH’s mother and are at peace with our decision to tend to our family’s needs and not make the grueling, cross-country trip twice in as many weeks. As wrenching as it was for MH to see his erstwhile vibrant and accomplished father so debilitated, MH was able to have ten days of “what counts,” we’re-all-in-this-together time with his mother and sister, who worked together as a family, loving and caring for their respective husband and father, setting up in-home hospice and nursing care, and staying with him until the end.
* * *
The scrimmage is “touch,”
not tackle. What, you ask, could
possibly go wrong?
The zen/sport koan
asks this: What is the sound of
one bone shattering?
* * *
What a way to start the season, am I right?
(Belles’s text informing me that she’d broken her finger during a rugby scrimmage)
More like, what a way to end the season before it’s started, I thought, when I saw Belle’s artistic rendering of the x-ray taken of her finger, the x-ray that made the Urgent Care clinician immediately refer Belle to an orthopedic hand surgeon:
Another one of the Events Previously Alluded To was our needing to tend to the fallout from the BFF (Belle’s Broken Finger) Caper.
Department of Long Story Short: once MH and I understood the extent of Belle’s injury, we brought her home from college to consult with an orthopedic hand specialist surgeon. Her fracture turned out to be a very complicated one, the kind of case which both challenges and tantalizes a good surgeon (and we found an excellent doc for her. It seems all those certificates on his exam room wall were legit, and not just purchased from those ads you used to find in the 1970s issues of Mother Jones magazine).
After Belle’s post-op appointment her surgeon set her up with an initial PT session with a finger therapy specialist. Dr. FingerWhiz gave Belle his permission to return to college, with the proviso that she will need frequent and regular PT sessions for the next eight weeks, and also be seen by a local (Tacoma) hand surgeon for post-op followup and eventual removal of the surgical pin. If she is diligent in her PT she can hope to obtain what, we were told, is be the best case scenario for return of function – a 80-90º bend in the finger’s joint. She will have some permanent loss of movement and function in the finger, which will never be able to join its other finger buddies in forming a fully clenched fist.
As my patron saint Doris Day would have said, Que sera sera. Or as one wise family friend put it, there are enough clenched fists in this world.
Doris bravely kept on keeping on, despite her debilitating neck-clenching injury.
Speaking of fingers, “Where were you when I was a toddler?” I asked the hand surgeon, when we chatted after Belle’s surgery and I held up my very own “special needs” pinkie finger. You should have seen the gleam in his eyes.
My funny finger used to have its own FB page.
Content warning: really cool pictures, including a view of the wire left in Belle’s finger to realign and hold in place the smashed bits of her finger joint. For some reason, my darling daughter resists my suggestion to hang a tree ornament from the wire’s hook. Kids are so conservative these days.
The surgery in progress.
Before the post-surgical unveiling.
Frankenfinger.
* * *
Department of Cheap Thrills
And I do mean cheap: driving around the parking lot of a Fred Meyer store, verrrrrrrrrrrrry slooooooooooooowly, looking for a parking spot, while the Low Rider song is playing on my car’s radio.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeee haw.
What can I say; I’m over fifty.
* * *
May your thrills be cheap but satisfying,
may your bone fractures and heartaches mend,
and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
[1] Our tragedy is your gain, or some equally insipid slogan, might be inserted here.
[2] Mh’s mother is very much alive. Does that make her his early mother?
[3] Except that the crow big enough to hold our family plus flight crew never flies directly from Portland to Orlando, but always wants to take you to up to Seattle and then to Los Angeles or Dallas or Chicago first.
