On Thursday, 26 days after the surgery, I went to Kaiser Oakland to get the cast removed. I drove the F-150–it’s got an automatic transmission, so I can drive with just my right hand. And who uses turn signals anyway. I parked on a nearby residential street and walked under the freeway and past the tire shops.
I’d been looking forward to the feeling of the technician’s saw cutting the length of it, to the release of the pressure. The relief was good, but not quite what I’d hoped. The forearm looked like a newly shelled shrimp, and felt as raw and amorphously numb. Free, but useless for now.
And just as painful. I‘d thought the pressure from the arm swelling into the confines of the cast was the main cause of the pain, but the rough sores and the rawness of the skin were still hot and sharp. The surgical scars, six inches on the side aligned with the thumb, and another equally long aligned with the pinky finger, sang their sensation brightly with the novel cool air.
And I could feel the fascia, under the skin, stiff and turgid, painful to the touch, and unyielding whenever I tried, with little success, to rotate the forearm, or make a fist, or even droop my wrist.
Life is suffering.
“You can go ahead and use it, lift things,” said the P.A. I asked her to renew my scrip for Dialudid.
Which I haven’t used since, but still might. That morning, I’d awoken with an unexplained headache and nausea so intense I wasn’t sure I could make the appointment. Food poisoning? Sudden onset of severe sinusitis? A little later in the day, I thought about the Dialudid again, and a felt a physical revulsion.
Oh, so that’s it. I’ve been taking this stuff at bedtime, and sometimes again in the middle of the night, for a few weeks now, and my body and brain don’t want any more. I’d had the chronic constipation, and then the persistently runny nose, just like any other junkie. But now it was like I was going to finish with my works and then go vomit in the bushes, just like I’d seen guys do back on the streets of New York.
It didn’t stop there, either. My meditation practice was oddly thrown back, to the time before I felt my self inside myself. These last many sessions I was no longer turning toward that entity; no longer soothing it, or playing with it, or watching it dissolve. Instead, I was just kind of drifting on the cloud.
Life is suffering.
Four weeks ago, as I lay on the pavement, breathing into the pain, waiting for the ambulance, I promised myself I’d stay open to the lessons of this experience. Later, I shared this intention with my muse and sensei, and she kind of went off on how accidents can just be accidents, they are not there to teach lessons. I get that. Still, I honor my intention. Accepting impermanence is hard, and the difficult times in our lives can be gateways to a greater understanding.