healing progress

It’s been about five weeks now since my crash.

For the first week after my crash I was in a hard splint that covered my arm all the way to my elbow. The timing of the crash was pretty terrible because I had agreed to be a groomsman for Jason’s wedding, which was the following week. I had a lot of road rash on my face, but by the time of the wedding the scabs had mostly fallen off, and the morning of the wedding I ended up picking off the rest of the scabs. And thankfully my suit (just barely) fit over the splint.

The splint came off a few days after the wedding, about ten days after the crash. I was really glad to have it off, because my hand and arm was really itchy. It turns out my hand was itchy partially because the wound in my hand was still oozing. For the next week or so I had to change out the gauze and bandages over my hand daily. At about two and a half weeks after the crash the wound had healed enough for the doctors to take the stitches out of my hand. I wore a bit of gauze for a little while longer until they were confident that the wound was fully closed.

Fast forward to today– the wound is fully closed and the fracture in my hand is almost fully healed. I can wiggle my fingers and can touch my thumb to almost all my fingers, where even I week ago I couldn’t even touch my pointer to my thumb. But I can’t yet make a fist or completely straighten out my middle finger independently of my other fingers. Thankfully I haven’t gotten into a fist fight or felt the need to curse someone off this past month, and hopefully I’ll be able to do those things again soon (not that I ever really do those things…)

For the first time since the crash I’m really starting to be able to use my right hand again. I’ve been able to hold a pen and make my signature with my right hand. I’ve been able to hold a fork in my hand, although a bit awkwardly still (and I’m still not able to use chopsticks.) I missed my car dearly, so thankfully there’s enough strength in my hand to hold the stick shift and start driving a manual transmission again. And thankfully for my work I’ve been able to type with both hands again, nearly doubling my productivity.

I’ve been visiting the orthopedic department of the hospital and have been visiting with a physical therapist that specializes in the hand. Seeing x-rays of my hand and seeing the posters on the walls of the orthopedics department showing the complexity of the hand made me realize how amazing our hands are, and amazing our bodies as a whole are. And seeing the daily progress in my healing has made me realize the amazing ability of our body to heal itself.

Seeing all this has made me remember the passage from Psalms about how we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Its something I guess I’ve taken for granted. I mean I’ve always known that our bodies were pretty complex, but seeing my hand go from completely nonfunctional to almost completely functioning again made me really realize how wonderful we are put together, and how wonderful it is that our body is able to put itself back together.