Today was spent getting photos of interactions with different people for my website. It is great to have friends with many talents such as photography to help out. I met a lovely older couple, Don and Nancy (87 and 86) who volunteered. It turns out Nancy has a pelvic floor disorder so I was able to use my pelvic model to explain her condition to her while the photos were taken. I had no idea how animated my face gets when I am teaching women about their bodies. Some of the photos were quite funny. I met a woman marched with MLK and worked in the women’s movement in NYC with Bella Abzug. I can’t wait to visit her again and learn more about her life as an activist in the 60’s. We had dinner with another interesting woman who also agreed to be photographed. In between there was a failed attempt to take photos walking Buster. Dragging a dog is not a good look. I was photographed riding my bike and on a walk in a woods. It was an inexplicably exhausting day. Hopefully there will be enough shots good enough for the web page.
As I was preparing for the day, I had to remove a band-aid from my latest misadventure and it caused me to reflect upon all of the injuries over the last 8 months. Right after I started working with my new trainer last August, I seemed to have a new injury every week or two. I cut my finger in the kitchen; aggravated my left thumb arthritis; aggravated my right wrist tendonitis; sprained my right ankle and then cut a different finger slicing sweet potatoes. Braces and bandages aside, I was always able to do my workouts around whatever the new injury was.
I went several months without an injury until this week. I was carrying a plastic laundry basket full of clean laundry and didn’t remember there was a one step down. I fell forward on my knees – fortunately without knee trauma. I got up and continued walking only to discover I was dripping blood. I had managed to raise a flap of skin on a thumb on the edge of one of the square holes in the side basket.
Incoordination and minor injuries have not been unusual in my life but this has been quite the cluster. My family was shocked that I was going to be a surgeon. Fortunately, attention is so focused in the operating room that I never cut myself or anyone else.
As I am entering a different stage of my life, I am going to try to bring more focus to my everyday activities so I can avoid some of these nuisance injuries which take far longer to heal than they used to.
I discovered that you can get chain mail gloves on Amazon and I have not cut myself slicing sweet potatoes again!!
While writing this post, I managed to get bitten or stung by a wasp while I was trying to kill it. I got it inside my sock thinking I could take it outside, but it managed to get me through the material. My finger aches a bit and there appears to be a bit of local swelling. Hopefully this is it for a while.
Tamara Unleashed 