The Tale of My Wrist (With Pictures!) · 9:20pm Mar 28th, 2019
Okay, first up, all the pictures in this post are going to be hidden behind the jump. There’s not even a featured image for this one, despite me having ten pictures of my wrist at the ready for the post. Why?
Because some people do not want pictures involving even a little blood or pain. And some of these pictures are a little gross. So if you’re squeamish about that kind of thing … Yeah, this post past the jump is going to be a little unwelcome for you.
Anyway, that warning out of the way, today’s post, as promised, is about my wrist injury. How it happened, what’s been going on since then, and my recovery. Because it’s a fun, interesting tale.
I do have one small bit of news on an upcoming thingamajig before I get rolling on this however: This month’s Patreon Reward! It’s going up tomorrow, and it’s a doozy of a preview. What of, you may ask? Well, my current project is, as I’ve mentioned a few times, a Halo novel! The first three chapters of one, anyway. The plan is to pitch the first few chapters and the outline at Gallery/343 and see if they pick it up.
But since that’s what I’ve been working on, this month’s preview is going to be an excerpt of the first chapter, which I finished yesterday. Pre-alpha, naturally, but it’s a lot of fun. I’m enjoying it so far, and in fact really want to get back to work on it, so let’s get to this post so I can continue working on it! But if you’re a Patreon Supporter, check back tomorrow!
Now, about my wrist injury. Let’s start at the beginning …
I have a part-time job working at a local convention center. While my full-time hjob is writing, which takes about 8-10 hours of my day, often more, it doesn’t pay all the bills yet. So I have to work part-time in order to make ends meet. This means that my average workweek ends up being around 60-70 hours, but hey, sacrifices for the job, right?
Writing, to be precise. The other job, well … let me tell you about it.
I work in the operations department, which is setting up, taking down, cleaning, and other assorted tasks vital to a convention center. If you’ve ever been to a convention or a vendor’s conference of any kind and seen hundreds of chairs set in nice neat rows, huge panels of staging, drapery, dozens of tables all set up with nice tablecloths and skirts …
Yeah, we do all that. We set it all up. We keep it clean. We straighten it up. We take it all down. And more. If I listed all the things we do, it’d be a post into and unto itself.
We’re also the absolute lowest of the low where I work. So low that most of the time our department feels like an afterthought to the office part of the building. Lately there’s been one manager who’s started to reel that back (great guy, him I back) but it’s been pretty common with our job to be handed incomplete diagrams, measurements that don’t conform to reality or the laws of physics, and other things like that which we’re just expected to “fix.” Our shifts have gradually been pushed further and further into the night so that events can run later and later (the current common shift is 9 PM to 3 AM or 10 PM to 4 AM), with no compensation offered for the extreme lateness of the hour. The pay is also low, so low that we’ve had serious retention problems and our department is quite understaffed. Right now about half our department is made up of high schoolers, because they’re the only people we’ve managed to attract with our low wages (which are below the living wage—not minimum, just living—in our area). Which comes with its own problems as minors can’t work certain hours, but that’s another story.
Why do I work there? Because the hours are flexible enough that I can focus mainly on my writing, and just sort of somewhat disconnect and do the job to make it through. But if it sounds like the place may have some issues, well … yes. I’m explaining this because it leads into how I got this injury by kind of giving you an idea of how it is in our department.
Yipe! Hooray for divine intervention and good doctors?
Good luck and speedy recovery. Hope you get full use of your hand back sooner than later.
5034422
I straight up credit divine intervention with this one. I owe some angels somewhere some drinks.
Scar tissue is a wonderfully flawed part of our anatomy. It's useful for healing, but the long term effects of it are crappy. When I was in 5th grade, I got my pinky run over by a skate blade at hockey practice. It was nearly severed, but emergency surgery kept my functional digit count at 10. Only issue is that the physical therapy I went through didn't quite salvage all of the motion I used to have, and to this day, I still have only about half of the dexterity in that finger as I once did.
Keep that exercise up religiously, my man. Glad you're doing okay
Best of luck with physical therapy!
Wow just... wow.
Also screw your workplace they need a safety inspection by an outside source stat.
5034479
Yeah, the body is wild, but it's definitely version 1.0! Scar tissue overhealing is definitely a bug!
5034481
Thanks. It's boring, but it's got to be done!
5034516
Yeah, the other day when I was trying to make my work restrictions clear my boss dropped the "Well I'm sorry this job has been such a bear" on me like he was trying to guilt me on it.
This incident is making me realize my dislike of the place is moving into outright unhappiness.
5034735
Seriously think about anomisaly reporting them to your local gov safety people. Sounds like they’d fail.
That is.. amazingly fortunate to have not caused extreme amounts of damage. Good luck on your recovery, and therapy.