metal chic

please ignore the split ends and the goodwill t-shirt, and focus right in there on my kick-ass cast:

the people of the interweb have spoken, and i have heard your cries: black attack. thanks to everyone for the color suggestions! not only was black the predominant choice, but also it's going to (presumably) look cleaner than a lighter color choice. they did not have a bacon cast, nor were there any pattern options. there were a lot of NEON! choices, but i just couldn't go there without first buying jelly shoes, and lets be real - i smell enough like sweaty foot as it is without throwing jelly shoes into the mix. the cast-wrapping expert lady asked if i wanted sparkles, and i was like FUCK YEAH! so she dumped a bunch of silver glitter into her gloved hand and smeared it all over the cast, while also squeezing and molding and generally just man-handling the fuck out of my throbbing noodle. (that sounds like a bad letter to penthouse.)

before she started in on me, though, i asked for her advice about what gray has lovingly begun calling my "mummy hand", thanks to the whole rotting flesh-sweaty foot smell i've got going on. she told me to clean my exposed fingers with rubbing alcohol and try not to sweat. (ok, sure - i'll just turn the sweat glands in that area to their "off" setting, i can do that right here with the magical unicorn dial in my ass. thanks lady.) she also told me that i shouldn't worry too much because most people won't notice the smell. she compared it to "the smell of lady parts", saying we only notice our own cooter smell because we "have a direct line to it". clearly this lady has never followed an obese woman into the bathroom. i wonder how she explains the mummy hand phenomenon to little kids who are not familiar with the joys of personal freshness.

cast lady had a sense of humor, which sort of offset the fact that she was literally imprisoning one of my favorite appendages in a hard, smelly shell from whence there is no escape (never realized i was claustrophobic before). as she wrapped, i remarked on her precision and lack of hesitation, "obviously you've done this a ton - you're very quick compared to the guys who splinted me." cast lady paused from snipping and wrapping, looked earnestly into my face, and said, "actually this is my first time, i looked it up on the interned last night so i could do your cast today." bu-dum-CHHHH!

anyway, i left thoroughly grossed out, yet properly bandaged, and streaming glitter behind me in an obnoxious trail of cooter-scented sparkles. the doctor has ordered me to return on april 2nd for a new xray that will verify that he doesn't need to "intervene" with surgery. i'll also get a new cast because the swelling will be gone and my arm will have shrunk from disuse. another 4 weeks trapped in the second cast, and i will need 6 weeks to get back my strength before we'll know for sure that surgery isn't necessary. if my hand works, then i'm in the clear. if the carpels are still "sagging", then i'll have the pleasure of going under the knife. (if the latter, i wonder if he can do a rhinoplasty while he's in there?)((would save on anesthesia))

i know this is endlessly fascinating. here are a few other things i've learned so far in my adventures as a cripple:

• kids stare
• casts are mostly made of fiberglass, not plaster
• my arm exactly matches the bar stools at the longfellow grill on lake street in minneapolis
• Q: can i jog despite the broken arm?
• A: no, it jiggles the bone painfully, and it contributes to the mummy hand stench
• when someone asks what i did to my arm, what they really want me to say is "bar fight" or "orgy mishap".