Neglecting the Broken and Other Forms of Torture I'm Retiring
Or, the Story of the Broken Finger
This is the story of how I spent Rosh Hashanah in the emergency room. This is also the story of how I ate when I was hungry and why that mattered, of how women will often push past their own pain without even knowing, and how I am learning to see my own body as she is and promise to care for her in the same way I promise to care for my own children. It is holy, and it is human, which, come to find out, has become my favorite of combinations.
I had been sitting in the emergency room for nearly two hours, elevating what I assumed was a hand with a very broken ring finger at the very least. My beloved friend was gracious enough to drive me, as my house was full of people that I hadn't seen in decades to celebrate a holiday that was supposed to welcome in sweet, new beginnings that ushered in a freak accident and a wave of panic and pain instead.
I hadn't had anything to eat since noon, and it was close to 8 PM when, after waiting for what seemed like an eternity for a doctor to come, I finally asked my friend if she had brought any snacks. This may not seem like something to note, but the internal war I had over whether or not I should eat something was waging.
I am used to ignoring my body’s needs. I'm used to telling her that she's wrong. And truth be told, I've gotten amazingly good at convincing myself that my brain knows much better than my body does. She is used to me bypassing her very clear communication. But there was something that shifted in that small emergency room as I stared at my very crooked, broken finger.
I knew she would finally need me to listen.
I knew that the season for me to ignore what she needed was long gone. Because of my anxiety, the stress of the situation, and my lack of nutrients, I was starting to get lightheaded and woozy. I had to eat something, and she always had snacks. She tossed me a tiny bag of granola bites, and I had only eaten a few before a hand surgeon came flurrying into my room hardly pausing to ask my name before tossing around surgery as the only viable option of recovery.
The problem was, I had just eaten something. And surgery is not an option when there's something in your stomach.
I have thought about that choice nearly every day since the accident. The choice I made to finally listen to the needs of my body. The choice that made immediate surgery impossible, causing a hand surgeon to set my finger in the middle of the emergency room while I did my best not to scream (I can’t remember, but I’m not sure it worked). He gave it a 20% chance of healing on its own without surgery while I was sitting there in the ER. When I went to his office three days later for a follow-up, he seemed a bit stunned at the progress I was making. So, he unwrapped it and brought me back to get another x-ray. As he gingerly laid my hand on the x-ray table, he glanced up at the screen. He paused a moment, clicked, and then turned around to stare at me.
“You broke your hand this year”, he said.
“No”, I responded, “I broke my finger. You set it. Remember?”
“No,” he said shaking his head, “you broke your hand across these three knuckles sometime in the last year, see the shadows here?” he pointed to the gray spots on the x-ray.
“Oh, yeah. “ I remembered an incident about six months prior when I closed the top of my hand in the car trunk door. I remember it hurting for several weeks, but I promptly ignored it because I had shit to do.
The gravity of why he was staring at me so intently finally took hold. It was a mixture of awe and confusion because what was MY normal was actually not normal at all. I had grown so accustomed to neglecting my own needs that I lived for months with broken knuckles.
It was there in his office that I made the decision to never neglect what is broken ever again.
He decided to wrap three of my fingers in a hard cast in order to hold my ring finger together. I'll return on Monday for a follow-up to determine whether or not surgery is necessary, but this incident has taught me so much more than just how to chop a cucumber with one hand.
If I wind up needing surgery (please pray I don’t), I will still never regret eating those granola bites. For the first time in my documented adult life, my body told me what she needed, and I answered her with grace, nourishment, and care. I didn’t gloss over her pain and suffering, I didn’t bootstrap my way through, I didn’t revel in the suffering.
Have I had a million meltdowns since?
Absolutely.
And I have paused every time, hand on my heart, and whispered-
“I’m listening. And I will take care of you.”
Yes.
I hope I always will.