- Boxing therapy + wire + flu self inflicted pain 31 December 2009
Normally bandages support muscles, compress swellings, protect joints and generally help to aide healing and relieve pain. The hand therapist’s ingenious treatments didn’t quite work that way, although healing was in, pain relief was out. So that taxpayers’ money would not be squandered, the NHS version of boxing therapy did not involve anything as fun as a prescription to hit things or attend a gym or give the garage door a good seeing to for the damage it had done to my fingers. Boxing therapy NHS style was simple, cost effective, self-inflicted torture. The look was Mohammed Ali before the gloves were on. The reality was a version of Chinese foot binding for the hand.
The beauty of such a simple system is that it works, in combination with other therapies, slowly and over a long period of time. First bind and try to bend the damaged fingers. Distract yourself from the pain. The fingers adapt. The pain eases. Tighten the binding. Solve the Middle East crisis. Distract yourself from the pain. The fingers adapt. The pain eases. Tighten the binding. Invent a perpetual motion machine. Distract yourself from the pain. The fingers adapt. The pain eases. Tighten the binding. Solve the mysteries of the universe. And so on. Repeat while you have breath.
Sister approved of the rehabilitation efforts. She had experience of physiotherapy departments. She said this particular rehabilitation would be difficult and eye-wateringly painful. “If you’re not crying, you’re not trying”, she said.
Making a fist Boxing therapy + flu 31 December 2009
We tried to get married on two occasions and our persistence paid. The second attempt at a wedding was successful where the first on the island in the big lake in Northern Michigan was not. Although everything was in place, license, justice of the peace and beautiful surroundings, things weren’t quite right. “I knew you wouldn’t do it”, said the colleague. “We took bets on it and I won”. It would take moving countries and a second try later that year in England for the promise to take hold.
- Post therapy making a fist + wire cube + flu 5 January 2010
It was twenty years ago on an early September afternoon and not long after the first attempt at a wedding I said farewell to family, friends and country. The tears held back until I boarded the plane and slumped heart hopeful and sad into a seat. The sense of loss overwhelmed the sense of longing. While I plumbed the depths of self pity a smartly dressed man indicated he was interested in the seat I was in. Through self-absorbed tears I motioned him away, admonishing him with the revelation that I had just left my old life behind and might he please leave me alone in misery and avail himself of one of the many other empty seats. With a smile and quiet British charm he agreed he might indeed, but the airline had thoughtlessly provided him with a ticket with that particular seat number on it. “Oh”, I said, “…sorry” as I skulked to my assigned seat aisles away in another class, adding the first mea culpa to the litany of apologies that would become the mainstay of my vocabulary and new life in England.
At the airport in London, the immigration officials were cautious, checking all of us carefully, insisting each was thoroughly examined, tested and x-rayed. I protested and waved my certificate indicating I was tuberculosis free. But, the piece of paper was trumped by protocol; I was treated no different to the many other women trying to emigrate that day, some of whom looked quite poorly and actually were coughing. An eternity later the process complete, I was free to get dressed and take myself and my few possessions through the gates that separated me from my new life. And there, on the other side was my love, in a gesture now familiar as it is comforting, distinct from all others in the room, his arms stretched wide and welcoming, his face beaming, his eyes smiling, welcoming me home. That morning my face was damp from tears of relief and happiness knowing the politics and protocols of the day had not kept us apart.
Post therapy Make a fist +flu 5 January 2010
After spending this past summer together on the cultural island in Northern Michigan, we were about to leave. At the airport my husband was drawing the scene outside the window, planes, strange machines and people. I spoke on the phone one last time feeling I should remain to do my bit in the family. Bound to and torn between two families, two countries and two continents, I wondered why I had ever left, yet how could I not return with this man calmly drawing the airport scene while I tried to resolve this dilemma. Just as indecision, fatigue and doubt reached their peak; I was annoyed to find my wedding ring again slipping off the little finger where it had been for months, displaced because of the damage done by the accident. But this time, when I tried placing it on my ring finger, as I had tried and failed so many times in the ten months since the accident, it slipped over the knuckle and stayed.
That afternoon, some twenty years after my journey alone, we boarded a plane bound for England together.
After the tears and the tales are gone, it’s likely that only the drawing, like so much of art, will remain.