Pain in the ...

Why is it that some days feel absolutely epic and others fly? Last week flew, this week trudges. This morning’s classes felt like 5 hours rather than 3. I then helped prepare lunch for another 2 hours (even with three people Turkmen meals take awhile to prep), napped the nap of the exhausted, and then returned to school for another 4 hours. On a slow day, every lesson feels like it has the high gravity mass to warp time around itself and make it move slower than its normal path. I finally got around again to the class where I dislocated my shoulder and they look at me with a kind of frightened awe, as it I might spontaneously combust at any moment. It takes the pressure off making an interesting lesson plan when my sling is such an object of morbid fascination. I’ve started wearing my sling only when I teach (when I’m most tempted to fling that arm about) and then leaving it off while I walk around and sit with the family, as I draw enough attention without looking like an amputee under my coat.

use small gestures

"And the house was *this* big!"

And that's the part where I fling my arms out so wide I throw my right arm out of the socket, cry out like a wounded wildebeest, sink to the floor in front of 20 terrified Turkmen children, pop it back in with a sickly squishing sound, and cancel class. I've never see them move so fast out the door. Then came in the flurry of teachers, a mix of genuinely concerned, genuinely curious, and genuinely gossip-hungry. We called PC for advice, preferably for instructions on how long to hold on the heat pad/ice pack, and got strict instructions to come to the office RIGHT NOW! So, still dressed in my bright floral Turkmen koinek school uniform, I packed up my stuff one-handed (my usually useless left arm appendage got more work than it has in the last year), and came to the city. As soon as I arrived at the office I was hurried to the hospital for a series of tests and prods that seemed more appropriate for a fracture rather than a dislocated shoulder (especially a dislocated shoulder that's back in it's proper joint already): shots, X-rays, and emergency room tendon specialist called in from home. All for poor little old me. The result is that I have to wear a really annoying sling for two weeks, I'm not allowed to raise my arm about my head, and after two weeks I'm going to have to do intensive exercises to build up the muscle so that it will properly hold my bone in the socket. Apparently I have a naturally really flexible bone structure, but that comes at the price of joints more prone to disconnect. Well, I may have to wear a sling, but it's worth the story of reattaching my own arm in class.