Thursday, 18 September 2003 | Abilities

My food is cut up for me in small squares—pizza, burritos, sandwiches, fruit—since my sore front teeth make it unbearable to use anything but my back left molars. I imagine that, when I eat, I look something like a dog who's been given bubble gum, although no one has said so. At work, I hold a pen in the same teeth when it's necessary to press "delete" in concert with "ctrl" and "alt." My coworkers snicker at my new handwriting and offer to take notes for me, to get me beverages, to bring me food from the outside. When they're not looking, I clumsily put on my headphones left-handed, dragging a foamy earpiece across my face; I try to scratch my right arm with the butter knife I've adopted; I try to scratch my left arm with the cloth of my chair.

The other day, even though I used Jenga-like precision, I disturbed a finely crafted pyramid of plastic containers when trying to retrieve a single container from an overhead shelf, almost sending the bulk of them down on my head. I stood there for probably two minutes, left arm stretched above me holding the shelf together, my useless right arm wrapped across my chest, and my voice calling out to no one, "hello?...hello?" I fumble things that are handed to me; I sleep with my arm propped on a castle of pillows; I shower with a plastic shopping bag. Pitiful.

When I wake up tomorrow morning (at 6:30!), I will head straight to the hospital to again greet the unpleasant surgeon who was part of yesterday's doctor marathon. I'm nervous, but telling myself that it's one step away from pitiful, and that the trust I must bring is not so different from the trust I regularly give pilots. When I wake up for the second time tomorrow, I'll have what I imagine to be a squeaky door hinge holding my arm together.

[read about the accident]

...

Two things of mine, elsewhere:
My Field Day story at scissorkick.com (previously posted on this site).

A Day in the Life: Brooklyn (online series), including one of the photos I submitted. (My photo is in "Prospect Heights"; the frames are messed up on this page, so, to see all of the pictures, use the "previous" and "next" arrows.)