Mummy Fingers

Man, am I stuffed. I just finished a big plate of spaghetti and Italian bread. The sauce was laden with onions garlic, mushrooms, tomatoes (in addition to the tomato sauce), and vegetarian meatballs (which are just as good as real meatballs, thank you). The Italian bread was brushed with margarine and sprinkled with crushed garlic. If I wasn’t so full, what I just typed would sound delicious, but now it just sounds like way too much.

I still have the bandages on my hand. Have I mentioned I had hand surgery a few weeks ago? I don’t think I have. Back in the fall of last year, I noticed a bump emerging on the middle finger of my right hand. I thought it was a wart (eww!) but it looked a little different. What made me rethink the notion that it was a wart? Pain. Every time it got hit, searing pain would course through my finger. I mean to tell you, it really hurt. I have had warts before and never did one of them cause that kind of pain. Well, over the months, it got bigger and I finally went to the doctor in early May and he diagnosed the bump as a ganglion cyst. He noticed another one on my thumb (I felt this one, but thought is was just a bony protrusion because it was so hard). He said that there was this thick, nasty liquid surrounding a bundle of nerves. An appointment was made to remove these things. D, being the sweetie that she is, offered to take me to the surgical center. Of course, I couldn’t have anything to eat or drink the night before the surgery. What does she do when we get there? Right in front of me, she asks the receptionist where the cafeteria was because she was hungry. Tease.

The last time I had surgery, it was for a lateral release of a tendon on my right knee. I walk weird. Well, at least weird enough to over use the outer muscles and tendons surrounding the patella (knee cap) and under use the inner ones. The result was my knee cap being off center and causing wear on the under side of the cap. What they had to do was make an incision in the tendon to allow it to stretch and allow my patella to return to the center of my knee where it was supposed to be. When I woke up from the anesthesia, I was groggy, my stomach hurt, and food wasn’t something that I wanted, even though it had been over 12 hours since I ate last. This time, I was a little groggy, but my stomach didn’t hurt and I was ready to eat.

Anyway, I had the surgery and the bandages come off tomorrow, and the stitches come out. Typing sure has been fun with two oversized appendages constantly clicking two or more keys at the same time. Giving the “thumbs up” to people at work makes me look like I’m giving them the finger since I can’t bend my middle finger into the fist required for a “thumbs up”. They think it is funny for the man with the mummified fingers to flip them off like that. I swear the wrapped fingers look like the fingers from the hand of a mummy. Bandages that look dirty and older than time. I WANT THEM OFF! The doctor told D (he told her because I was happily dreaming about dancing bananas and ligers at the time) that the one on my middle finger turned out to be a fibrous cyst instead of liquid and that it might come back at some time in the future. Great. More pain for me to look forward to with great anticipation.

I don’t want more pain. I don’t deal easily with pain. I admit it; I am a wuss when it comes to pain. Several years ago, I remember walking into the bathroom here at home and hitting the door jamb with my pinky toe, bending the toe nail back, not enough to rip it off, but enough to make it bleed and hurt REAL BAD. I starting sweating and my ex told me that my face was white as a bleached sheet. It’s a wonder that I didn’t end up passing out. On the day of my surgery, D wanted me to help Char to move a couch from the back porch to the front porch. Everything was fine until I started backing up the steps. These aren’t the normal steps that are shallow. These are the tall steps made of cinder block coated with cement. I was wearing my Birkenstocks (the doctors said to be comfortable, and even if he hadn’t, I would have been wearing them anyway) and scraped my heel on those steps. I had lifted my foot the height that a normal step would have been. It felt like I had punctured my heel with the sharp edge of a rock. Turned out, there wasn’t even a mark where I had hit it, but it too, hurt REAL BAD.

I can and most likely will deal with physical wounds. It may hurt, but they heal. Like D said, wounds heal, but leave scars. Scars are a reminder of the hurt. But what about the scars you can’t see? What about the emotional scars left behind from wounds inflicted emotionally? Those wounds that are hidden deep inside and harder to heal than actual wounds. They say that time heals all wounds. That may be true, but what length of time will it take to heal the wounds deep inside of me? No one can see them, but I can feel them. How will I know when they heal? Will I feel the wound close and scar up? You know what? I think I will just know. There may not be a great epiphany of great healing. I may not feel it when it happens. Or it may happen with a loud noise, a punch in the gut, or a kick in the ass.

Tonight, before cooking the aforementioned delicious supper, I had to wash dishes. Kind of hard to do one handed, but I did it. I had help (bless you, Big T, but daddy wants a moment alone), but turned it down. I didn’t want my little girl to see me like I was. I was thinking about this very thing. How I hurt and how I know the woman I have loved and will always love is hurting too. I know she is, but I can’t see it. I thought about that and I cried while one handed dish washing. I cried about how much I miss her, about a bunch of “ifs” that could have changed the outcome of our marriage, and about wondering if she missed me at all. If I knew that she missed me for one moment, for just one second even, I think the hurt could lessen. I will miss her for as long as I will love her: forever.

Hurt will happen again. But so will healing. It’s inevitable as life itself. You cannot expect to live a life without hurt and pain, whether physically or emotionally. You just have to take them as they come. Take them, like it or not they are coming. But usually on the heels of hurt and pain comes happiness.

I hope so.