Being Broken

On January 15, like a big fat klutz, I slipped in my own bedroom, fell, and fractured my humerus bone right by my shoulder socket. It was too bad a break to splint, so I had to have pretty major surgery to put everything back together (a plate that looks like a wrench in my arm, and ten screws that go all the way through my bone, up and down). And a big. Old. Scar.

Initially, just getting through the pain, the surgery, and then even more pain kept anything peripheral from concerning me. My boyfriend worked really hard with the insurance people, the disability people, and the medical people. My mom came and babied me for FIVE WEEKS. 

But when I began to move around a bit, when the use of my arm began to re-emerge, I began to notice a new ME emerging. I listened to others' terrible medical tales (one, a friend my age who had open-heart surgery only two years ago, which I never knew about before; another, a dear friend a bit older than me who had a surgery cause her to go septic). My arm was beginning to return to normal, and I was beginning to regain some perspective.

I've been so lucky to have a HUGE support system: my boyfriend, my mom, good work benefits, amazing doctors and nurses and great physical therapists who help push me and help me believe in myself.

As the healing continues (I just recently started driving again, I was cleared to work again in about a week, and I've even gotten a few yoga poses approved), I am faced with returning to "normal." But I am left wondering now what "normal" is. Maybe it was all the time I finally got to spend with myself. Maybe it was the time away from a dramatic work environment (one that, frankly, I'm not looking forward to returning to). Maybe it was the opportunity I had to devote time to things I care about: my blog, being creative, school. 

But I feel that something has shifted so dramatically that, like my scarred skin, I somehow cannot return to "normal." I kind of don't want to. I want to take all this change and knowledge and energy and do something with it. I guess the next step is figuring out what that is, and how to do it. Oh, and being able to take off a long-sleeved shirt by myself.