To See If I Could Feel

Note: photos posted after my 12 hour shift at work, promise. The plates in my arm broke, literally snapped. I could hold my arm in front of me and not see my hand. As I stand here at the computer, Glenn Smid gives me a funny look as I stretch my left arm and run my left hand over an invisible ridge. To a small extent, if I stretch the arm out and you look over my shoulder, you can still see a bit of a roller coaster kind of arm. But the effect changed my future days more than seeing David Janssen in the false dawn. June, 1989. I pretend nothing is wrong, my arm is just healing. July, 1989. I am chewing on my brain, finally giving in to my own frailty. The scar widens, my circulatory system in my left hand is gone forever. Over one week, the operating rooms blurring because my glasses were taken from me before I was wheeled anywhere, country music playing as the anesthesia filled my lungs, something about the Queen of Memphis. i awaken because my arm is being suspended in an ice bag and the pain is both hot and cold, needles and liquid tar, simultaneously. My brain could not process this and I begged for Demerol, I begged for something else than began with the letter D. The doctors knew my life was over if my left arm could not be fixed, so much of the bone powder now, because my right arm will always be the useless little fuck it has been since my unforgiving birth. The last resort, part of my right hip is grafted into my left arm, what the hell, make the insides a fucking video game. My new keloid scar will turn white when my arm tans, but I will not know this for two more summers. August, 1989. I am allowed to go home on uncertain legs, still on uncertain terms with my fate. September 1989. I turn 30.