PT Visit #3 & "Sister-Wrister"

Physical Therapist Matt massaged my lower arm and noted a small bruise below my elbow, "Did my massage the last time cause that bruise?"

"No," I replied. "My self-massages did it. My arm felt so tight, I must have rubbed too hard."

He was impressed and pleased with the reduction of inflammation in my injured wrist area, so he modified and created a revised exercise routine to follow.

A few hours later, at 6:30 p.m., we took a later than normal lake walk. We approached Walker Karen, an avid lake regular, like ourselves. She is probably 5 years my junior, has a charming southern accent, usually walks solo and chatting on a cell phone and waves to us, and is a librarian at a nearby elementary school. We've passed her innumerable times at the lake, but over the winter saw her very few times because early sunset made her walking times different than ours.

As we approached each other, something stuck out that was different. Like the attention-attracting flash of a K-mart blue-light special, our eyes honed to an object covering her left hand. A cast. Rather than our cordial and brief, "Hello, beautiful evening," we had to stop and share war stories. I've seen other people with wrist casts, but seeing hers was different because I feel kindred to Karen. We've navigated literal "water-over-the-bridge" times together at our lake.

"What happened to your wrist?" we asked, pointing to Karen's cast. "Diane's injury is a few weeks ahead of yours... her cast was taken off 2 weeks ago."

Accident stories with show-&-tell lasted at least 5 minutes. Her simple yet painful fall forward was going up unforgiving steps at work; my complicated and painless fall backward was an at-home slipper-stub, rotating and way over-shooting a chair’s seat onto a carpeted floor. Her fall was a week ago and required surgery; I was able to opt out of surgery. She has a plate and screws in her wrist; I am still deciding whether surgery is needed for that. It is her non-dominant hand that was injured; mine is the dominant hand. She has needed for pain strong, mouth-drying medication; I chose to take Ibuprofen only twice, early on, mainly hoping it would help reduce inflammation (but it didn't).

The haunting if-only regrets and choices made just before our falls re-play over and over in our minds; and, we have similar future unknowns.

"I noticed your wrist motions" Karen said, "Your hand is moving well."

Something about injuring a wrist hones eyes to the intricate wrist gestures of others. Like an actor's fine wrist movements on TV. The way their arm lays, with their wrist gently hanging over, say, a split-rail farm fence. Or how their fingers delicately bend as they talk. It is fascinating, because I cannot perform those motions as easily but notice them like never before and hope they eventually return like new.

Finding kindred-spirit "sister-wrister" created a new bond. We are walkers, still walking with similar injuries, and still facing recovery time ahead. Our empathetic parting words were: "Next time, we'll show-&-tell our progress. Take care."

For my family's reunion, after 25 long years, is it possible for bonds to begin to re-kindle? Our war stories are different, yet there are similarities. We can briefly show-&-tell, because we are kindred. Is there any need to ever delve deeper into the past?