𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐑𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏
𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐑𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏
It was the Fall of 1989. I was a 23 year old Queens Line farmboy, a high school dropout, and without hardly any prospect. The only outside work experience I really had was tending Doctor Willoughby's apple orchard and being a paint line flusher at Storwall (now KI) in Pembroke.
You read that right. That's exactly what I said. The Plant Safety crew set up a situation that led to me breaking my wrist. They turned off the lights in the corridor and left a pallet laying on the floor in the dark outside the Chemical Room door.
We were better off without those clowns.
Walking backwards, pulling the 900 pound cart full of paint thinner for flushing the paint booth lines out the door, my foot stuck right in between two boards of the pallet and got caught like those movies where a person gets their foot caught in a railway line switch. Tripping backwards, I spun around quickly to catch my fall, and landed hard on my hands, splaying them out wide, and breaking my right wrist with a loud snap on the concrete floor.
The rest of my coworkers lost their jobs when the contractor we all worked for lost their contract at Storwall while I was off recuperating on insurance. Ironically, my broken wrist resulted in me having income from the job longer than anyone else.
"Congratulations,", the doctor remarked, as he reviewed the x-rays of my grossly swollen hand, "you've just broken the worst bone in your entire body you could have." A scaphoid fracture. A tiny little bone in your wrist that has a blood vessel going straight through it. "Only five percent of scaphoid fractures heal without surgical intervention."
Great, just bloomin' great. Off for six weeks of healing, IF it healed, or an operation to remove it and replace it with a plastic one. If it didn't heal properly, the blood vessel wouldn't be complete and the second half would be starved for blood and atrophy. Basically rot within my own body. I was just 19 years old at the time, and already looking at my first artificial part aside from fillings in my teeth.
"Your fracture looks clean. Don't do ANYTHING until it heals. NOTHING, understand? You've got a one in twenty chance of it healing. Screw it up and you're chance goes down to none in a hundred."
I grimly nodded 'ok'.
The cast only allowed my fingers and thumb to stick out of it at the one end and went almost to my elbow. Rolling over in bed one night asleep, that heavy cast clobbered me in the head so bad it would have been merciful for it to have just knocked me out. Then at least I wouldn't have felt all the pain until I came to again. Just scrambled my brains like an egg. I supposed that could explain a few things.
As it was, it was one heck of a way to wake up. Kind of like Tim Conway in 'The Dentist', except with a heavy cast to the head instead of a hypodermic syringe full of local anesthetic to the hand. And leg. At least I didn't have to perform a medical procedure on anyone in my current state.
A few weeks went by, and I found I was more ambidextrous than I ever thought I could be. I could write with my left hand; catch with it; shave with it; dress myself with it; drive a car, truck, or tractor; whatever. I still didn't do anything as well with it as I did with my preferential right hand, but I could manage, and that was all that counted. The resilience of Youth is an extremely valuable commodity.
Being a farmboy, I quickly grew bored of doing practically nothing, so I branched out. Expanded my horizons a little, if you will. I found I could carry items too heavy for just one hand by holding them in my left hand and supporting them on my cast like a forklift. That worked pretty well. Dad kept admonishing me to be careful, but I was used to hard physical work and missed it when I couldn't. And I was always one to relish a challenge.
Everything was going great until one day Dad and I were in the back field on Bennett's side, burning brush from cutting trees on the fenceline. Against his better judgement, I insisted on helping. "Be careful handling those branches. You don't want to hurt your wrist.".
Ok Dad. Don't worry about it. I got it. I'll be fine.
The scaphoid is most connected with your thumb. I was picking up branches in my left hand, and using the palm of the cast on my right on the cut end of the branch to launch them onto the pile over the fire. It worked great until one particular branch. It was bigger than the rest; bushier. When I shoved it off from my cast onto the pile, it landed short of where I expected it would. It sprung back on its bushy branches right into my thumb. I felt a viciously sharp pain in my scaphoid area, and looked down at my cast, to see, to my alarm, the thumb part broken and now moveable. Ohhh crap... Now I've gone and done it. This isn't good at all.
I was actually more worried about Dad's reaction. Meekly and humbly, I showed him the break. Yeah, he was kind of disappointed with me and a little irritated, but this was the New Situation and Dad was a pragmatic, "it is what it is" kind of man. "I can't leave the fire unattended. You better take the truck and go to the hospital and get it checked out."
Arriving at the hospital, to my complete delight, the same doctor that diagnosed and casted me in the middle of the night when I broke it on the weekend Late Shift, was the very one on duty in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week. The stains on my cast easily gave away that I had been working. "Way to go, Genius. Now you've done it." That was hardly encouraging. Some bedside manner there. Sheesh...
He cut my cast off and sent me for a new x-ray to confirm his prediction that I had irreversibly screwed it right up now. He almost seemed to relish my plight and his position over it, the sadistic scoundrel. I sat back in the waiting room until he called me back in. "Against all odds it has knitted properly AND you didn't break it again. You have beaten every possible odd there is on a scaphoid fracture. It still needs more time to heal, so I'm going to cast it for protection again. You just bought yourself another 6 weeks in a cast, Einstein".
He had a strange way of complementing a guy.
Thanks a lot, pal... See ya around...
Four weeks down of a six week healing process, and only six more to go. Dandy. Just peachy. At least the darn thing didn't break again and require surgery with a Tupperware replacement.
When you're two thirds done a sentence in jail and you get another equal sentence for what you considered was Good Behaviour, it kinda dampens your outlook a little, y'know?
That six weeks dragged on for what seemed like six months. I equally didn't want surgery or a Milton Bradley bone in my wrist, so now wherever it came to my hand and cast I really but reluctantly watched my P's and Q's; whatever those actually are.
By the time that stupid, clumsy thing was finally cut off for good, my forearm had atrophied to half its original size. Except for its hair. The stringy, black monkey hair that now hung off my arm only made its white skin look even whiter, if that was even possible for a blue-eyed Scottish lad that was born Jane Mansfield-level blonde.
My wrist hurt all the time just from the weight of my hand on the end of it. I couldn't believe how much physical condition could be lost in such a short time. What seemed like a long time was really a short time. Perspective is everything. The pain from forgetting it was laying on the arm of a chair or the couch to getting up made my hair stand on end. The hair on my head, that is. I took scissors and cut off the drooping strands of orangutan fur within a day or two of the cast itself coming off.
As my hand and wrist and forearm slowly and painfully regained its size and strength, I found there were only a few things I couldn't really do. I couldn't milk a cow with my right hand, I couldn't hammer spikes without a professional, balanced hammer, and something else that just refuses to come to me right now. Attempt any of those things and my hand would swell up and my grip would diminish until I couldn't hold a can of pop in it. Anything else was fine. Now, once the pain had mostly disappeared, winding up pretty much ambidextrous, I hardly even noticed which hand I used for any task. I could shave with both hands to cut (see what I did there?) time in half if I wanted to.
Anyway, that was my last off the farm working experience until the infamous paper route first darkened my door. We'll get to that next time around...
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