The sickbed diaries VIII

This time one short week ago I was walking through my front door, a little blurry, numb from the neck to the tips of my left-hand hand’s fingers. I had just had a delicately brutal operation on the left shoulder, an operation designed to mend the damage done during a training fight over a year ago. Symptoms were not immediate and diagnosis took several months, not least because of my moving house in late march. This led to the apparently crazy gap between injury and repair. I managed my injury well, but it became progressively worse as, unable to train as hard as I would normally, and continuing to play cricket two, sometimes three, times weekly, it gradually ripped further.

The experience of being not only denied the use of my left arm, but also to suffer a constant fear of tweaking the repair, bumping into someone or something and collapsing in a heap of pain, was chastening. Vulnerability is not a feeling that I am used to. And vulnerable I am. I know (all too well), what it is like to attempt manoevres around an antagonistic individual knowing full well that a simple even poorly directed and relatively weak blow to the shoulder will not only cripple me in the immediate, but damage me in the longer term.

I am suddenly fearful of many things, of my immediate and long-term working future, of my long-term emotional health … and my general health. How much this injury was affected by the PD is a mystery to me, as is its potential deliterious affect on the rapidity and efficacy of the healing process. This worries me immensely.

The worry makes me flat. Flat emotionally, intellectually, physically. I am, well, if not exactly scared, at least very wary of being out in public. I’m quite. Quite. No. Quiet. That’s what I am. Quiet. Subdued. Contemplative.

 

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