Handy

I have an irony to share. It involves a leg that was broken from the hip down to the shin. It also involves an arm that was broken near the wrist with a compound fracture. I always thought that the leg would eclipse anything else wrong with me in relation to my motorcycle accident injuries. It took so much work for me to walk normally over time, and the pain has been so pronounced over time that I always assumed that the leg injuries would be the biggest hindrance to my daily living. The leg truly is a hindrance, but my hand has been getting worse with time. I’ve had some fairly serious nerve damage done at the wrist, and the combination of pain and numbness to my hand is at times consuming. There was also some tendon damage and it affects primarily the index finger. I have full use of the hand, but when I wake up in the morning it doesn’t open and close easily. Things loosen up within a short amount of time, but then the pain (strong discomfort?) begins to settle in. I have less strength in that hand than the other, but it’s the combination of nerve pain and numbness that can wear me down over time. It’s a really strange combination to experience, pain and numbness, but there you have it.

I have spent so much time working on my leg that the hand has almost seemed to be a secondary issue. In truth, it has always been a primary concern. It took a lot of work to get it to function properly. At first I was restricted from going into a kitchen because I had no feeling in the fingers and my occupational therapist feared that I wouldn’t feel anything if I burned them on something. I don’t cook, so yeah, no biggie. The therapist once told me that she had considered rejecting me as a patient because my hand was such a mess when she first started working with me that she questioned her own ability to be of any help. Over time I had to work very hard with a variety of exercises to get my hand to work properly.

The irony lies in the fact that I sometimes feel that further surgery would be of greater benefit to my hand than it would be for my messed up leg. I was told by a reputable orthopedic surgeon that any further surgery to my wrist would require a hand specialist. He also told me that I was better off enduring with the inconvenience and discomfort because he felt that the quality of any results from surgery would be uncertain.

So, bad leg, bad hand, neither seemingly worse than the other, and no real decision to be made on any of it. Just one freaky little paradox.