Thursday, March 11, 2010

At Least My Left Arm Still Works

Recently, I have been on a mission to find a new cane. Well, I am happy to report that the search is over. I no longer need a new cane....what I need now is a new wrist. Yes, today I took my gimpiness to new and unparalleled heights by fracturing/spraining my wrist. The same wrist I use to hold my cane. The same cane that prevents me from walking like the Phantom of the Opera. Translation: in the past 24 hours, my gimpiness has increased by roughly 200%. You know, because I really needed some special sauce on my disability sandwich.

The end result is that instead of being a six-foot-two chick walking in a slightly gimpy manner with a broken cane, I am now a six-foot-two chick walking in a highly gimpy, zombie-heroin-addict manner, minus the cane, with a broke-down wrist covered in a huge splint. (Unexpected bonus: because of typing difficulties, I might finally learn the noble art of concision). Someone really needs to give me my own category in the Darwin Awards...or at least a show on TLC. ("The Girl Whose Body Fell Off.")

And how did this happen? You can blame wheelchair basketball. Actually, you can blame me for returning to wheelchair basketball even though I was the proud owner of both a damaged hip made of ceramic and a partially detached ass muscle. You can further blame me for making a decision as I was being launched a few feet up in the air and was hurtling towards the ground to save the hip by sacrificing the wrist. I mean, I have been around the wheelchair-basketball block. I know that the first rule of falling is not to put your wrist out. I should also have realized that my hip is basically being replaced this summer and is therefore the prosthetic equivalent of a rental car. That shit is getting returned to the dealership around June. My wrist, however, is something I'm kind of stuck with. Bad read.

I have therefore abandoned my search for the perfect cane in search for the perfect way to not walk like you're about to eat someone's brainz. My immediate thought (because "House" is like crack to me) is that I could switch my cane to the opposite hand and walk like Dr. House. (House walks with his cane beside his injured leg, which is the opposite of what they teach you in cane-walking school). After some experimentation, however, it became clear that you must need to be a complex, twisted medical genius to rock that look. I don't have the coordination and wound up looking like someone's grandma who won't use a proper medical device because those are for "old people" and so drags herself around her apartment by using a broom handle as a "hiking stick."

The only solution is for me to go au naturale in the cane department. True, this will probably result in me frightening small children, but I've got places to go and things to do. Like hen-peck typing with my one good hand. Or explaining to the nice police officer that I'm not drunk, it's just that I had a hip replacement and my ass fell off and...

Hey, did I just get through an entire post without quoting Dan Bejar?

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