The Extended Breakdance Version
If you follow me on twitter or fb you may already know that I broke my right arm last Saturday. A number of people have been requesting the greater than 140 characters explanation so...
A friend and I were picking up bales of straw for the garden - we know someone who'll do the old fashioned small bales that can be moved by hand if we order them before he starts baling. (What? Oh, as mulch between the row of veg to retain moisture and cut down on the weeding.) We'd taken my ten to my place and had managed to get all 14 of J's on the truck by stacking three layers deep and putting one in the truck...on her lap. Because we're efficient that way.
Unloading in J's driveway went quickly until it was time to get the bottom 4 out then, because they were really jammed in there - think of the truck as spanx and the straw as, well, the reason one wears spanx -- the tailgate latch jammed. So I'm standing on the edge of the driveway which falls off behind me on about a 45 degree angle for about a metre, leaning over the side of the truck, hauling on a straw bale. The scene is set.
For the city folk among you, bales are held together with two encircling pieces of baling or binder twine. You shove your hands under the twine and you toss the bales around like lego pieces - you stack them in piles, you build replicas of the Mellenium Falcon, you leave them lying around for people to trip over. When you want to break up the bale, many people pull hunks of the straw (or hay) out until the twine is loose enough to slip off the end because it's impossible to break and often wins a knife fight.
So I'm pulling on the baling twine with my right hand. I'm giving it all I've got. The jammed bale starts to shift...
...and the baling twine breaks.
As I understand the science, all the potential energy that had been building to shift the bale became kinetic energy applied to my right arm. Which flew up and hyper-extended behind me. My body followed my arm (as a general rule, this connection is a good thing). I flew backwards, accelerating toward the ground at 9.8 m/s/s. Remember the hill? Because of the hill, the ground I'm going to land on is about a metre lower than the ground I'm standing on giving me more time to pick up speed. In short, I'm about to become gravity's bitch.
My right hand hits the ground first and all that accelerating mass - and there's a fair bit of mass involved - finishes the equation and the applied force is enough to snap my arm just above my wrist.
It sounded like a piece of wood breaking, which was pretty cool.
I'm in a plaster cast until Tuesday when I have new Xrays and might get switched to fibreglass. This would be a very good thing. Plaster is heavy. Although I bought an actual sling yesterday to replace the piece of cheesecloth the hospital provided and that's helped.
I'm very right hand dominant and this type of break takes your right arm completely out of service. There are things I can learn to do with my left hand - fyi, poking yourself in the eye with a mascara wand hurts - but there's a number of things you need two hands for.
Obviously, I can still type so I can still write but, right now, given the left hand only, intermittent pain meds, and less sleep than required for optimal creativity, it's going slowly. Since I'll be getting my right hand back in six weeks, I don't think it's worth it to take the time necessary to scale the learning curve of voice recognition software.
I am still going to Worldcon. I'll be at week five of six then so should have worked out how to function. At least as well as I usually do. I can already sign a recognizable version of my name and I'm thinking of having stickers made up saying: official broken arm signature.
Given all the people I know dealing with health issues that can't be fixed, this is merely an inconvenience that shall be thoroughly mined for research purposes.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, all this physical stress has popped up a cold sore.
A friend and I were picking up bales of straw for the garden - we know someone who'll do the old fashioned small bales that can be moved by hand if we order them before he starts baling. (What? Oh, as mulch between the row of veg to retain moisture and cut down on the weeding.) We'd taken my ten to my place and had managed to get all 14 of J's on the truck by stacking three layers deep and putting one in the truck...on her lap. Because we're efficient that way.
Unloading in J's driveway went quickly until it was time to get the bottom 4 out then, because they were really jammed in there - think of the truck as spanx and the straw as, well, the reason one wears spanx -- the tailgate latch jammed. So I'm standing on the edge of the driveway which falls off behind me on about a 45 degree angle for about a metre, leaning over the side of the truck, hauling on a straw bale. The scene is set.
For the city folk among you, bales are held together with two encircling pieces of baling or binder twine. You shove your hands under the twine and you toss the bales around like lego pieces - you stack them in piles, you build replicas of the Mellenium Falcon, you leave them lying around for people to trip over. When you want to break up the bale, many people pull hunks of the straw (or hay) out until the twine is loose enough to slip off the end because it's impossible to break and often wins a knife fight.
So I'm pulling on the baling twine with my right hand. I'm giving it all I've got. The jammed bale starts to shift...
...and the baling twine breaks.
As I understand the science, all the potential energy that had been building to shift the bale became kinetic energy applied to my right arm. Which flew up and hyper-extended behind me. My body followed my arm (as a general rule, this connection is a good thing). I flew backwards, accelerating toward the ground at 9.8 m/s/s. Remember the hill? Because of the hill, the ground I'm going to land on is about a metre lower than the ground I'm standing on giving me more time to pick up speed. In short, I'm about to become gravity's bitch.
My right hand hits the ground first and all that accelerating mass - and there's a fair bit of mass involved - finishes the equation and the applied force is enough to snap my arm just above my wrist.
It sounded like a piece of wood breaking, which was pretty cool.
I'm in a plaster cast until Tuesday when I have new Xrays and might get switched to fibreglass. This would be a very good thing. Plaster is heavy. Although I bought an actual sling yesterday to replace the piece of cheesecloth the hospital provided and that's helped.
I'm very right hand dominant and this type of break takes your right arm completely out of service. There are things I can learn to do with my left hand - fyi, poking yourself in the eye with a mascara wand hurts - but there's a number of things you need two hands for.
Obviously, I can still type so I can still write but, right now, given the left hand only, intermittent pain meds, and less sleep than required for optimal creativity, it's going slowly. Since I'll be getting my right hand back in six weeks, I don't think it's worth it to take the time necessary to scale the learning curve of voice recognition software.
I am still going to Worldcon. I'll be at week five of six then so should have worked out how to function. At least as well as I usually do. I can already sign a recognizable version of my name and I'm thinking of having stickers made up saying: official broken arm signature.
Given all the people I know dealing with health issues that can't be fixed, this is merely an inconvenience that shall be thoroughly mined for research purposes.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, all this physical stress has popped up a cold sore.