Household Appliances Hinder Recovery

While we were in St. Maarten, I fractured my wrist. Our building was set up with condo balconies jutting out from one side, and open corridors along the other. You climb an outside stairway, and walk along the corridor to reach the door to your unit. The corridors are open on one side, exposing them to the weather. But because they are considered part of the building, they are tiled in glossy white tile.

The tile looks great in clear weather, but when it rains, the tile gets wet. And when it's wet, it's as slick as ice.

My daughter and I left the unit to visit the swimming pool right after a downpour. I gingerly walked from the doorway to the staircase, edged down the stairs one by one, set my foot onto the tile at the bottom of the stair, and hit the ground like a bag of wet cement.

My daughter stood there with her mouth open as I groaned and rolled to my knees. Somehow I don't think she's ever going to become one of those heroic individuals who leaps into action in an emergency.

After a minute or so, I stood up, none the worse for wear (I thought) and we hung out at the pool for the afternoon. I had a minor nagging pain in my wrist, like a sprain. It didn't get better all week, and it didn't get better once I got home. So I went to the doctor, had X-rays taken, and sure enough, it's fractured. The injury is very minor, so the doctor gave me one of those Carpal Tunnel Syndrome wrist braces that fastens with Velcro, and told me to wear it for 4 weeks, taking it off to sleep and shower. When I'm wearing it, I have no pain, and it's only a minor inconvenience.

There's only one thing that could be a problem, and that's if I re-injure it, which is very unlikely while I'm wearing the brace.

Yesterday, I was getting dressed after my shower, and of course, I didn't have the brace on my wrist. I was watching TV, absentmindedly putting on a shirt. I put my left arm in, and slung the shirt around my back. As I slipped my right arm through the armhole, I stretched it up into the air, right into the whirling blades of the ceiling fan. Damn, that hurt. Looks like I might wearing this brace for more than 4 weeks.