don't look. no, seriously.

i tried to warn you.

i've peeled off some of this dead skin since yesterday, but it appears that curse of the mummy hand lingers, if only a little - it's stinky shroud has been disposed of, but the body was perfectly preserved beneath, and waiting to be reunited with...something...in the next life. or something, during the first hour after the cast removal, the negative imprint of the bubble wrap lining was visible in my skin, which is ultra-sensitive now to things like air and water and being touched and looked at.

the arm itself is not particularly smaller than the right side, mostly because i have tiny wrists to begin with (less than 6") and the previously broken area is either a) swollen or b) bigger where the bone bridge grew. you can, however, see where the short cast stopped on my forearm - there's almost a landscaping tier-down effect going on, which i must say is not as sexy as you might imagine. oddly, i have more freckles than before and the little hairs are darker in some spots, and every last hair on the portion that was casted stands straight up in the air when i walk across the room, apparently because the breeze gives me goosebumps but at the same time, the top half of my forearm is all "psh, you guys are total losers, give me 40 below and i'll give you gooseflesh, lay back down, you're embarrassing us all."

you may notice i have not resumed punctuation, and that is because i've grown to like this sloppy, lower-case, cluster fuck of a blog style (i guess "style" is stretching it a tad), but also, it's because i underestimated the power of joint stiffness in a wrist that has been immobilized and squeezed for five weeks. my wrist...it, like, won't bend. or turn. AT ALL. and when i try to slowly stretch out the muscle, there's this blinding white pain and my thumb locks in the Pain On position, and i have to suck in a big mouth of air and physically unlock the thumb with my working hand. and then i go and put the splint on right away so as to avoid any accidental contact/motion/thinking about the goddamn high maintenance joint on my left side.

i guess, having never broken a bone before, i did not realize how painful it would be to rehab. i'm going to have to get very drunk this weekend so i can soak the wrist in water to loosen it up, then bite down on a leather belt while i slowly rotate my hand a fraction of an inch at a time, because that's the only way i'll be able to tolerate the pain, and yes i'm a total fucking pussy, but keep in mind, when i actually broke the thing i almost went to work instead of back home, and i kind of thought it was just a sprain, and i didn't cry and it wasn't as much like water boarding as this is now. but i kind of have to get the damn thing to bend, otherwise i might as well chop it off for all the good it's going to do me.

i'm hoping this is totally normal for freshly reincarnated joints, but yesterday as i stood looking at my new xrays with the bone doc, he was careful to keep repeating the phrase, "it looks reasonable," and "it's healed reasonably well," and "hmmm, well you don't have to have perfect wrist bones in order to have a perfect wrist," (which, what the fuck is a perfect wrist, is there some hollywood standard i'm unaware of, and oh my god should i hire a trainer and a chef for my sub-perfect wrist?). so basically the problem remains what it was on day one: that the radius bone isn't up as close to my hand as it once was, and subsequently all the multitude of carpal bones are kind of sagging - listing, if you will - and so we're basically just hoping it's no big deal and i'll be fine and my wrist will one day WORK again. because if not, i'm really not sure what the options are, except that i do know what they are, and they involve physical therapy and hospitals and time off from work and the possibility that it won't fix anything, but it will cost a fortune.

i need one of you to come over and hold me down while someone bends mummy wrist so i don't have to do it myself because i, truly, don't wanna. you must make me.