Could be worse

I have a bum shoulder. It’s not my only unfortunate physical characteristic. I also have a Down Syndrome palm. Well, two of them if you’re counting. Dick likes to say Just think how smart you’d be if you didn’t have Down Syndrome. I think he wrote an “Ode Down Syndrome Girl” when he was courting me. Now that’s romance.

But I digress (and not very sensitively, either). Apparently I have loose ligaments. Those dang ligaments. You can ignore them for years (19) and take them for granted, and then, suddenly, when you’re playing tennis, snap, or, (imagine some sickening thwack-y, sticky scrunch sound) and they turn on you, letting your humerus bone (which should be connected to your thigh bone) slide out, just this far, from the shoulder socket. And you have to yank on it and twist it to and fro and it goes back in.

This happens every six months for a while. You have surgery. Your husband and your sister both see you in a state of semi-undress after the surgery and you realize that, of the three of you, you are the only one who could be naked in the room without it being really awkward. But it is kind of awkward anyway, or would be if you weren’t on those really nice painkillers. Nice painkillers, so-so surgery.

Time passes. You get used to only doing the side-stroke (left side) when swimming. You teach your best friend and your husband how to help get your arm back in. You’re cautious when you push the kids on the swing. You don’t play tennis or reach for things or sleep with your hand tucked beneath your head any more. You scream at friends who twirl your kids around like normal people, afraid they’ve inherited your ligaments.

Your arm goes out on September 11, 2001 while you’re doing your physical therapy and you feel really sorry for yourself until you get to work at in upper Manhattan and look at the TV.

You think, could be worse. Could be a WHOLE HECK of a lot worse. At the YMCA I (this is about me) see a person with no legs getting ready to use the weight machines.

Still, even if it’s not a traumatic injury (not caused by trauma but by faulty parts), it is limiting, restrictive, painful. It makes me feel like I’m not quite right. And it hurts.

During pregnancy it’s worse. Everything’s loosening and softening for that baby. But even pregnancy comes to an end and things go back to normal. Until one day, in one ten-day stretch, it comes out four times.

And it’s not the pain or the inconvenience or the fear that it’ll come out when I’m holding the baby so I drop her on her head on the cement or when I’m driving so I roll the minivan and everyone dies. It’s that I can’t play ping-pong, the only sport where I have a chance of kicking Dick’s behind. And maybe a little about those fears.

So I’m having surgery. Again. Everything’s advanced, medically speaking, light-years ahead of where it was ten years ago. I said I would like a replacement fake shoulder, but we’re gonna try this poke and stitch and tighten thing first. I’ve often thought to myself that I’m glad to just have an arm, even if it is defective. It doesn’t look defective. I look normal. It’s only on the inside that things aren’t right.

I almost felt stupid asking about the surgery. Sitting in the doctor’s office with people using canes and walkers and wheelchairs. The doctor said Of course we should do it. You’re only, what, 30? And you can’t raise your arm up? I blush. It’s amazing what you can get used to. And it could be a lot worse.