The Collarbone’s Connected to…

Damn near everything, as far as I can tell. Yes, I know it doesn’t rhyme or make for a good song (the everything-bone?), but you’d be amazed at the things you can’t do while keeping your shoulder area immobilized! With that in mind, I’ve put together a little list – I like lists in case you couldn’t tell – to enlighten you on the ins and out of this craptastic injury so that you’ll be should it (god forbid) ever happen to you. And so I can vent…you know you miss my posts!

Little Known Facts and Random Observations about Broken Bones and Such:

• Collarbones are involved in basically every movement you make, and you will never appreciate them until one of yours cracked in half. Want to reach that toilet paper on your left? Nope! Think you can put on a shirt alone? Try again!
• Along that same vein, adult jeans and other leg coverings should come with a velcro option. It is slighty better to have coworkers wondering what the heck you ate as you moan and grunt in a work potty stall for 20 minutes than to actually ask them to button your pants for you. Slightly.
• You can’t wash a recently surgerized arm while it’s still healing. Annoyingly, you cannot wash/lotion up the non-broken arm alone either since you won’t be allowed or able to move the other side.
• Showering with a trash bag on is challenging. The things are like soap magnets making it impossible to rinse.
• Your body creates extra skin when it swells to 3x normal size without you ever realizing it. You then get to shed then new skin like a molting snake when the swelling goes down, much to the disgust of other humans and to the delight of dogs everywhere.
• There is no exfoliant known to man that will remove the now-dead skin in one sitting. Even if you spend $30+ on it.
• Fingers that once resembled sausages look more like shriveled, hyper-elongated raisins once the swelling goes down. In good news, these newly desiccated appendages can fit my shiny new engagement ring (just don’t look too close or you’ll be offended by the flaky skin textures).
• The white part of your sling starts to look brown after very few days when worn basically 24 hours a day. Whoever decided a sling should be white, even in part, should be beaten. Severely.
• Literally anyone you meet is authorized to ask you “What happened?” if you are wearing a sling. It’s kind of like being pregnant (or so I’ve heard), except it is accompanied by looks of horror.
• Answering a terse “Broke some bones” or “Bike accident” is not a sufficient answer to these queries. If you made eye contact, expect to the entire story, in detail – even to the gas station guy.
• The sole exception to the above rule is your company CEO. People like CEOs really don’t have time to do the pretend sympathy bit and will run away quickly upon a sling sighting.
• Everyone and their mother will promise you donations to your fundraising after hearing the “horror story”, How many will actually donate is still TBD.
• These same people all think you are crazy for daring to get back on a bike after such a fall. Obviously these people have never tried cycling!

Enough bulleted lists pretending to be real content for one night. I’m getting better at this one handed typing, but am still frustrated at my “desired blog posts” to “typing tolerance” ratio. So many ideas, such a tired right hand! I should hopefully have injury progress updates ready for tomorrow though…keep your fingers crossed!