Arm broken equals free time

9 years ago

I have broken an arm. This is the 1st time in my life that I have broken any bones in my body. And it sucks!

But, rather than being all pessimistic about it, I prefer to see the positive side. See, you get a lot of free time to do things that you probably have been postponing for ages. For instance, taking care of your taxes, organizing all the receipts of last year's expenses, or even turning an old laptop into a hallway digital information system (yes, with one arm). These are the kind of things that I would definitely be dragging on for years before I finally came around to doing them.

Another good side of this situation is the fact that you learn how to be more resourceful because, obviously with only one available arm, trivial everyday tasks become rather challenging. To give you an example I bet that you have never tried to put on socks or open bottles with only one hand. This actually gave me an interesting idea which is to write a couple of posts about easier ways to perform some of these tasks. But that's something for another occasion.

The same good side about breaking a bone, time, is also in itself really crappy. I cannot wait to go skydiving again so, naturally, I had to ask my doctor whether there was a way I could speed up the healing process. Maybe with some kind of calcium and/or vitamin supplements, I thought, my body would be good to go in a month. Of course the doctor, after laughing in my face, proceeded to explain that there isn't really anything you can do but wait. The tissue regeneration takes about 3 weeks. Because, when you break a bone, you also do a lot of damage to the surrounding flesh, tendons, and muscles. The bone itself takes about 5 weeks to reach a state of good calcification. Finally, when you get the cast taken off, you have to do a bit of physiotherapy to get back the amplitude of movement on the joint(s) that have been on cast. The bone calcification will continue on for one or 2 months, after which it will be so much stronger that you will never break it in that same place again.

The bottom line is my doctor has now become my newest skydiving instructor: I will only be allowed to go up when he says so :-)