Everyone should break a bone exactly once in their lifetime. Preferably in your teens or early twenties, so that you are old enough to think philosophically about it, and yet young enough that it heals at a decent rate. I have had my share of accidents and so on, but the worst I've suffered is a muscle pull, which I managed about two weeks back, on a hiking trip.
In such cases, one should also preserve for posterity the way by which one came upon one's injury, embarrassing though it may be. After all, you'll only do this once in a lifetime. How did mine happen? I and a friend were on this nice hike through a rather tricky trail, which effectively went up a hillside covered with rocks and foliage. On the return, we had to take the same tricky path, and going downhill on a steep slope is damned tricky, especially with shoes that are as ill-treated as mine are. I slipped off a rock that we were supposed to jump, hardly four feet in height perhaps, and landed hard on my left side. I didn't break any bones, but I did scrape my knee, bruise my hip and pull my elbow.
In the immediate aftermath of the fall, I thought I had gotten off pretty lightly. The real pains began the next day. I thought I'd have a mild bruise on my knee; it turned out to be a pretty bad flesh wound (the kind you get when you skid a bike on a sandy road somewhere in India). I thought the elbow was just a muscle ache; it turned out to be a pretty bad tear, and I was unable to do anything at all with the entire arm. I had a dull ache in my hip, but only yesterday did I notice the bruise, which is completely below the skin, and covers fully two square inches. I've been limping around for the better part of two weeks, as expected.
What I did not expect was how freaking difficult it is to get through life with something as simple as a torn elbow and a scraped knee. Apart from the limping, I mean. I could do nothing with my left arm for a couple of days. I couldn't lift anything, I couldn't lean on it, I couldn't flex or twist it in all those intricate ways required for simple tasks like turning the doorknob, opening the fridge, or wearing my backpack. And all the while, my knee was no better: it kept stinging all the while, whether I stood or sat, it pulled against my jeans whenever I walked, and it showed just no signs of healing. No amount of medication or ointments did anything to ameliorate the situation for a week. After four days, I didn't bother with any of it, except to use a spray bandage to cover the wound, and I progressed at pretty much the same rate. I may have slowed down repair in the first week by allowing my knee to get wet when I bathed. (The first rule of healing is clean the wound and let it dry up, and don't let it get wet. How could I have disobeyed that rule?)
It was hellishly irritating. Even in my sleep, I'd wake up frequently, because while tossing and turning in my sleep, I'd inadvertently roll into a position of pain, and my body would scream bloody murder. Things did improve slowly, on a continuum. I can't quite point out exactly when what improvement came about, but of course it did, as it was supposed to, and the past two days have been good. I can walk comfortably now, I don't need the spray bandage, and the wound doesn't sting. My elbow hurts if I twist it into specific positions, but I can at least pick up the milk carton (though not my laptop), amongst other things.
I've never actually given any thought to what people with various disabilities must go through. You can read as many books and watch as many videos about different people with various kinds of handicaps and what they must face, about how they must struggle so hard to regain even the briefest semblance to a 'normal' life. I feel a new kind of respect now, one that arises from being aware of what a fellow human being must go through. I feel a little humbled, given that all these small things that I can take for granted in my full health, are not small matters for so many people. Yet they live, they work, and they are happy. It's a really humbling realization.
I shall probably heal fully within another week or so. And I shall be careful not to push my luck any further regarding my health and physical well-being. I've been having dreams from which I wake up and can remember no more than the word osteoporosis, and always then my mother's stern warnings regarding milk and calcium come back to me. Ain't a pretty feeling.
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