can only use one hanf on the keyboard, which makes for some interesting typos, such as hanf instead of hand…and therefore writes veeerrryyy slowly, especially as compared to her formerly fleet-fingered self.- sleeps in fits and starts, because no position is comfortable since she is sitting upright and no narcotics are delivering a knockout punch. (Parenthetically, she would like someone to explain the attraction of Vicodin as a street drug because frankly, she finds it a mediocre analgesic at best.)
- finds getting dressed an exhausting procedure which has revealed her unfortunate predilection for pullover shirts with sleeves. Bras are totally out of the question, and being summer, it’s too hot for the few button-up, long-sleeved blouses in her wardrobe. Thus, she is reduced to three ratty old tank tops that she pulled out of the Goodwill pile, where she threw them last summer in a much-needed cleanout of Garments I Should Never Wear Again. (Parenthetically, this only reinforces her hoarder’s instinct to never throw anything out because of course you’re going to need it again…someday…maybe.)
- is amazed and disheartened at the number of trivial tasks that require two hands. Putting toothpaste on the toothbrush. Removing contact lenses. Fastening the leash on the dog to take her for a walk. Bagging the proceeds (the poop) from that walk.
- has so little–no, make that no patience with the healing process. When she was a small girl being rushed by her father out of the shower, she pronounced, to his amusement, that he had “no waitability.” Clearly this is a gene she inherited.
- cannot stand the way her life has been usurped by this seemingly minor accident. In the final stages of packing for a trip to LA where she would lease an apartment for a planned–and enthusiastically anticipated–return to the City of Angels in September, a misplaced foot, a slide on the carpet, a slo-mo fall, landing full weight on the left shoulder–.
- is appalled at the nightmare images of aging this is producing, like some personal Rocky Horror Show. That old woman with long stringy gray hair wearing an identical sling in the doctor’s office–is she me? How far or how close am I to that?
- is grateful it wasn’t her hip because she knows, ’cause her mother often told her so, that once you break your hip, that’s it: you turn senile and die alone, lying in a puddle of your own urine, in a nursing home.
- is trying to get used to the fact that this new normal may not be so temporary. If the shoulder heals as it is doing now, the range of motion on that left side will be limited forever. If it continues to move, however, surgery will be in order. Major surgery, with the drilling of bone and the insertion of metal rods and screws.
- used to think that forever was a long time, far away. Now, not so much.
The thing about aging is that no matter how hard you try or how clever you are, certain things that you swore you’d never do, feel, be, you will. One’s idea of oneself as always on the upward slope, an original, forever innovative is reduced to a series of common punchlines in jokes one still thinks to tell: sore feet that demand comfortable shoes; thinning hair that exposes pink scalp; elastic waist pants that render all attempts to be fashionable foresaken. No amount of good care and better luck will stop the inexorable march of time. Telomeres will shorten. That–and taxes–are a fact of life.
Jane Gassner
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