One year ago

A year ago today, a surgeon took my shoulder apart and put it back together, thus starting a time of intense pain and physical therapy that lasted months longer and hurt worse than I expected it to.

 

I thought I'd dig up the pictures and look at them. It surprises me that it hardly looks like anything at all in them--the bruising is negligible, the stitches not very intense. But I couldn't use that arm at all, for anything, for months. I learned how to write left-handed. To use my camera left-handed. To perform bathroom functions left-handed. (That was the biggest challenge--just getting my damn pants off to take a leak was a nightmare.)

 

The other day I tried to hang on the chin-up bar at the gym. I couldn't do it for more than five seconds. Before the surgery, I could do actual chin-ups. A year later I can't even hang from the bar. It's interesting, the ways it's still messed up in there. I can do a handstand, but I can't hang.

 

My clavicle and sternum are still seperated and it hurts every day, particularly when I wake up.

 

I hope very much that next year, on March 9th, I'll be able to do chin-ups.

Done