For some reason or other (and I can only assume it’s surgical skill), this has never been particularly painful. Apart from when I sneeze, which if I’m unlucky, seems to jolt the wound inside too much for comfort. The main problem, as I suggested yesterday (in a post which, I note, was less popular than a piece of spam about carrot cake I stuck up … am I boring everyone?), is psychological.

I am suddenly fearful, fearful that any particular action may have irreversible consequences, fearful that I feel no pain because inside it’s just given up trying, fearful that what was once the way of being for me, physically, will be impossible, even after rehabilitation.

And it’s the rehab which stretches ahead of me now, even though the initial healing process has yet to finish, the sling to come off, my various support mechanisms still kicking in. I don’t need the tramadol, as the pain I feel is more than tendon deep.

This injury was in many ways inevitable, but that doesn’t mean it was inevitable, nor that I will repeat the behaviour which, ultimately, led me to it. I have been, for all my rhetoric about refusing to ‘fight’ PD, doing exactly that, stemming the feeling of failure through action … in every part of my life.

But, I have not failed simply because I have this irritating disease, nor have I failed in acquiring this injury – though it did, in large part, stem from my irritating habit of falling back on what I know rather than pressing forward, with faith in my heart. I am not what I am. I do not have to be what I was. I can be better. I will be better.

My shoulder’s screaming at me now: ‘why did you wait until now?’

Well, maybe that is what is inevitable. Perhaps it takes losing a limb, albeit temporarily, to wake you up. Next year, I reinvent myself, in many ways. The process has already begun. I’m sorry it didn’t start sooner – then I might have avoided all this.

You see, perhaps it was inevitable, after all.