Graduation Ball
My bone doctor is wasted in the medical profession. Not that he's not a great bone doctor, he is. That guy can tell you anything about your carpals, or metacarpals, or phalanges, or countless other bones. But Medicine’s gain is Broadway’s loss because he has possibly the largest hands I've ever seen, and every time I go to get my wrist checked, I cannot help but think that his jazz hands would be Tony Award-winning.
I haven't told him this. He doesn't have the sort of personality that would adapt well to the suggestion that he should abandon his chosen vocation for the roar of the Greasepaint and the smell of the crowd. And maybe he will never know, because my opportunity to tell him has passed.
Graduation is in the air all over The Valley this week. Kids are graduating high school - though in my day, back in Scotland, nobody actually graduated high school with a ceremony and a diploma. Instead, you just ‘finished’. I seem to remember celebrating my last day at school, marked with a walk to Cumbernauld village with some pals and a bag of chips.
But here in LA, kids graduate preschool, kindergarten, middle school, high school, and possibly a college or two. There are gowns and balloons and parties and certificates and yet more parties.
So this week, when my bone doctor with the impressive phalanges told me my bones were all healed and I had graduated, it was nice to feel I wasn't being left out.
I'm not done with the broken wrist saga yet though. Not by a long chalk. I have already moved into physical therapy, where a very nice lady with a gentle voice and dainty hands, now works her magic, trying to get my hand and wrist to move properly again.
I was quite disconcerted when I met her for the assessment. It is totally odd to have someone hold on to your hand and gently ask how you’re feeling. Her voice full of compassion, she said she was glad I was there, but sorry I had been going through such pain. I honestly hadn't felt as awkward since the time I helpfully tried to pull a hair off someone’s face and found it was still attached to a mole.
I told her I was ‘fine and just had a broken wrist, that's all’, and she smiled sympathetically and said, “There's no ‘that's all’ about it. It was a big deal.”
It wasn't very Cumbernauld to be honest, and I was beginning to wonder that maybe she wasn't my kind of person. But then she asked who my bone doctor was, and when I told her, she said, “Woah. That guy has the biggest hands I’ve ever seen,” and I said, “Right?!?” And I knew we were going to get on famously.
Then she gave me a set of exercises for my hand that all seemed a bit gentle to me. But as she knew about the doctor with the big hands, I figured she must know what she's talking about. Besides, my method of muscling through and periodically yelling, “Oh for fucks sake, pull yourself together.” at my hand hasn't as yet yielded the sparkling results I planned.
She tells me recovery will take time. She says this is the hard part because when you're wearing a splint, everyone can see something's been broken. But now there is no cast, nobody can see the pain. But it's important not to ignore that it’s still there.
I didn't tell the bone doctor about her - well not by name anyway - because, like I say, he's not much for small talk. But on my last visit, he was telling me my bones are all fixed, and now I need to get my hand and wrist moving, so I should buy a ball to start building hand strength. So I told him that my physical therapist had instructed me on no uncertain terms not to get a ball, and to absolutely ignore anybody who even suggested it.
And then my big, strange doctor with the giant hands did an odd thing. He smiled. A great big smile that matched the size of his hands. And he said (quite surprisingly, I thought), “She's right. What you need is flexibility. Strength you can gain at any time. You can just decide to get strong and work on it. But with an injury, there's a limited amount of time to get full flexibility back. Strength is one thing, flexibility is another. And really, what you need is a balance of both.”
And I thought to myself that that might just be the best graduation speech ever.
Because, you see, I can be strong. I am really fucking strong. But I don't like accepting vulnerability. I prefer to put up a fight. And there's a time and place for that. Definitely.
But vulnerability is not the same as weakness. Vulnerability is such a specific thing it even has its own word. It marks the space from moving from one happening to another happening. Vulnerability means you’re learning flexibility.
The lady with the gentle voice and the dainty hands says that my prognosis is really good, but that full recovery comes from getting the machinery in my hand and wrist to gain elasticity, and from getting my brain to agree that it's time to relax and let go.
And so it seems my knackered hand is a five-digit metaphor for everything. Trauma happens. We get broken. We get fixed. And after that - annoyingly - we have to make room to heal.
And though yelling “Oh for fucks sake, pull yourself together,” certainly is tempting, it’s not quite the rapid cure-all one would hope.
It’s ok to be a bit vulnerable from time to time. In fact, the lady with the gentle voice and the dainty hands says it’s not only perfectly normal, but healthy. And I trust her, because she, like me, marvels at the size of the bone doctor’s hands.
You know, you don't always get a certificate every time you graduate. Though I’m beginning to think maybe you should.
xo
PS: Every time you click on the wee heart emoji on this post to like it, it mystically crosses my bone doctor’s mind that he might be good at jazz hands. That’s a complete and total lie - I think - but if you click ‘like’ it doesn’t half perk up my algorithm.
P. P. S: If you enjoy talking/listening/stories/ random facts, come and join me and Mr Tweddle this Thursday at Fish and Bear. First time is free, gratis, and a gift from us so you can try it out. After that, it’s $10. xo
And because I am totally showing off - look, I have a book for sale. Written when I had two fully functioning arms - though no better grasp of punctuation.
Volume 2 is available now: US, UK, Can, Aus
Audiobook link https://amzn.to/3Dh0MVP
If you do buy a copy, please leave a review on the site as it helps people know that I write in proper sentences… erm sometimes xo