It’s been a long time since I sat down to write something besides an E-mail. Things have been busy and, on many levels, chaotic lately. Personal problems—relationships, work—have presented themselves. Often perplexed on how to proceed, I consulted with friends and family and increased my attendance at AA meetings. This bore great fruits. What surprised me throughout all this was my ability to meet these challenges as a mature, adult human being.
For four months from February to the beginning of June, I was off work for a shoulder injury I sustained on the job in November. Descending a terrace between houses on one of my relays, my feet slid out from beneath me. I sought to turn and catch myself with my right arm. It was evident from the moment it happened that something was very wrong.
I carried the rest of my route, thinking that I’d be able to work through it. You know, a form of “walking it off.” Once I got home, the arm started tightening up. When I woke the next morning, it was clear that I’d undone something that needed very dearly to stay done.
For two months and a half months after the injury, the postal service kept me in the office casing mail—sorting loose mail, generally magazines, large envelopes, and the random letters that don’t make it though the sorting plant. The days dragged on. I missed the “excitement” of the busiest time of the year.
The whole time, I was in physical therapy trying to strengthen the shoulder and make it pliable again. But it became clear after about six weeks that the injury was grave. Then, on the recommendation of the doctor in charge and the physical therapist, I worked through the intricacies of getting an MRI approved through Worker’s Comp and the Department of Labor.
The MRI revealed massive tears in my right rotator cuff. Some of the tears had been there for quite a while. Fortunately, the law reads that the injury can be originated by the trauma or exacerbated by the trauma. Thus, though I had some problems I didn’t know about, I was able to be treated without having to resort to my own insurance and sick leave.
The surgery was a trauma in and of itself. A procedure that the doctor said usually takes less than an hour took him almost three. For nine weeks, he had me in an arm immobilizer, where usually rotator-cuff patients have their arms immobilized for just four. At the same time, I wasn’t to do anything. No exercises or movement outside of a therapy chair that moved my arm up and down in increasingly steep angles over the course of a month.
I’m not a guy to say no to an opportunity to stay at home. In the four months, I finished my latest book. I did some writing, some of which is on this blog. I took a nap every day. Five or six books feel before my reading eyes. I goofed off a lot, my favorite. It was a great time for a long time.
Then, things got difficult. The uncertainty of my work situation was acute. They could call me into work anytime they decided they found something I could do. Answer phones. Sit in the lobby as a greeter. And so on. Waking in the morning, I never knew if I would have the day to myself or have to give it to the workplace.
As time passed, the thought also began to bother me that every day I had off meant a day I would have to work in the future. The more time at home, the more time before retirement. Making sure I was getting paid dogged me with forms and phone calls and E-mails to the Worker’s Comp office at the Post Office and the Department of Labor. When I found the Post Office had paid me more than two weeks out of my sick leave, I started a bureaucratic adventure that continues to this day. I was supposed to be getting paid from the Department of Labor. I would owe the Post Office any money they paid me out of my sick pay when I got the sick leave back. Right now, it’s more important to me to have the sick leave than to worry about paying back what the Post Office is owed.
It goes on and on.
There were also some issues at home, many of which had to do with my inability to adapt quickly to changing conditions. We had a visit, too, from my German friends, which took all my powers, however meager they are, to plan their stay and a trip we would take with them from Kansas City to the Flint Hills.
The time was stressful and hard to navigate. The complexities of the situation kept me up at night and disturbed my naptimes. They bothered me walking around during the day. In a state of almost constant agitation, I wasn’t the most amenable family man or friend.
Fortunately, I knew where to turn. Avoiding the insanity that leads to the first drink became paramount. I became conscious just what a matter of life or death this is for me. Previously, when dealing with the death of a best friend and in the throes of unmitigated and undiagnosed mental illness, I put my head in the loop of a rope. Serendipity saved me from that fate. But now 12 years later, I understood that the notion to take a drink never came to me. It was apparent that given the choice between returning to the drinking life—I despair at the thought—and a rope, I will choose the rope.
So, here I sit, now two months into being back on the job (my next essay) and looking back, it seems to me that this adventure is another of the kind that challenges me, troubles me, perplexes me. I have faced these kinds of issues before. Inevitably, I come out on the other side stronger than when I went in. I can’t say I’m wiser, just more self-aware.
I just wish I was grown up enough to gain this kind of awareness on my own rather than being helped through it by periods of great pain. Someday, perhaps. Someday.
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