Alas, it seems I am worthy of medical care.

Armed with the shiny plastic insurance card, I am treated like someone worth fixing and so…

My surgery to fix my broken arm has been set for August 18th.

I’m trying to remain calm and matter of fact about it, but I can tell you that I am not looking forward to it one bit. The surgeon, while very nice, made a point of telling me all the things that could go wrong. And of course, what they actually plan on doing to make it right is just as yucky.

My arm will not require to be re-broken as the humerus bone just never healed at all.

He explained that there were two ways bones heal all wrong: either they grow but in the wrong direction and get all lumpy like or they just decided to close themselves off and just be done with it. Mine called it quits quite a while back.
They will cute the two end’s off and make them all fresh.

Then they go into my hip. It sounds like a small incision; less than two inches. They basically cut a door in my hip bone to get inside where they “scoop” out the younger spongy inner bone yuck. The hip bone wound, he warned, is often what people complain about years later. Great.

The spongy stuff, they put in my need to grow damnit bone area, and then seal it all with a metal plate that is screwed in. Of course the plate is just there to protect the bones as they finally grow, so if they decided not to grow again, then the metal plate can break and we’ll have to do this whole thing all over again.

And then there is the nerve that I was already warned about by a similiar no insurance broke arm adoptee (believe it or not found me via broke armness, not adoption, but now I call friend) who just got it all done. Apparently, if you look at the radial nerve funny, it goes out of whack. That’s suppose to be an orthopedics’ joke. Deb said it hurts like hell and who the heck knows when it might stop. Worse than the arm pain and it could last 9 months.

And my doctor warned me that when they move the radial nerve, it might stretch out and then I would have a droopy wrist that I couldn’t lift. Man, I am a bad enough typist as it is!

As I have been saying, he did a great job of talking me out of wanting to have surgery to repair the humerus.

I still have to do it. But at least I know what I am getting myself in for. My MIL just had hers done. I have been talking to the other adoption afflicted broke arm, I have been reading up and it and my doctor told me the risks involved.
Imagine that. He had an ethical responsibility to tell me of all the possible hardships that might become me. Unlike some major life altering huge decisions.
I’m still going to have to undergo the surgery. He knows that. I know that,. There really isn’t any other recourse. Despite the risks, I must try. But at least I know the truth and I can make as real a decision as possible.

I bet you a million bucks that when I meet with the anesthetist that he will warn me that I could die.

He has to do that because he is ethically bound to as well. I think I might even have to sign a disclaimer. My doctor tried to tell me that they like to do it under a local, but I tell you I am having none of that. No way am I going to be awake while they cut and scoop and screw my bones. Is it a bigger risk, sure, and they will tell me that to. They will tell me that I am being stupid and that I am letting my fear control my thinking and another choice could have a better outcome. OK, so I can be predicible. I acknowedge that.

Now mind you.. I am not a fan of broke arm and it is rather a pain mentally, physically, literally, figuratively, but it is what I know.

I am use to being lame, being broke, living almost two years with a completely broken left humerus.

I know my limitations and what I can and can not do. It is controled, it is stable, it is steady, it is secure. Going forward with surgery means that I am opening things up for a big change, a big unknown. Granted, I know he only told me these things because he must and we all do hope for the best and it doesn’t always happen and we can believe in luck and a tab bit of “not me, I have suffered enough”; but still, I dread it. For even if it truly works out and everything goes smoothly and I can look back on these two years of living with a broken humerus, I don’t want to have to go through the pain.

And that’s normal. Pain freaking hurts! It SUCKS.

I spend all too much of the past few days having serious discussion with folks on good drugs that won’t make me nauseous like Codeine and Morphine does! I know it is going to hurt allot. An maybe having surgery right after a break like this is good in another way ( besides being able to avoid feeling sub-par), you are in the middle of the first horrible pain and swelling.. and so more pain and cutting and scooping and screwing does not sound quite as awful..or if it is, you don’t care because you just want to be ok somehow. So you just go with the flow and it all gets better at the same time and you are OK!

Now, after being non swollen, not too much hurting, just achy, not cut, bleeding, oozing: I’m not feeling that into it. And that’s normal too. People want to avoid negative things. Is it trully the lesser of two evils? I have no clue and that’s the catch: I won’t know if I am better off after, then now or if it as a bad decision until ater I go though with the experience. Once I trully know, I cannot go back to now. And by time I can regret it, it will be too late.

Can I say again; I am use to being like this, as much as it sucks, to be lame and broken.

I can’t help but think of the mother who refuses to acknowledge the adoptee who has so carefully and painfully traced his or her way back to them. These mothers are so use to being lame and broken that they cannot even take that first step towards the possibility of healing.

For in between the lameness and the possible healing is a vast river of molten pain that they must willfully and slowly wade through. Just the my surgery. She doesn’t want to go there. She feels she cannot. I can’t imagine what it would be like. And it is because she cannot see to the other side and she feels she has to do it alone. No one willingly goes into these kinds of situations; it’s like a survival instinct.

Unlike with this surgery, with my doctor and my husband, and my co-workers and my family and my friends all telling me that it will be alright and worth it to get to the other side, to heal, the rejecting birthmother often has no one to cheer her on. Still the secret, still alone. It’s probably normal for her to fear the pain enough that she rejects the reunion and hence, rejects the adoptee again.

It’s the closest I can get to really understanding that fear. I never shared that one.. I made up my own. I can only hope, that at some point, no matter how much they have grown accustomed to being lame and broken that they can know that there is really no other choice. You got to face it and come out the other side. Even if you have to re-break and go through all the same pain again. It’s just got to be done to get to any possible change and healing.

And healing is good.

So, if I can go under the knife.. and I really really really don’t want to, then it would make me really happy to hear that somebody made that first step. I don’t know who.. maybe this will reach out to someone who needs to hear it:

It will be alright.

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I’m still not down with it, but expected Tweeting from the iphone and Twitpics. Let’s hashtag #brokearm, shall we?