It was just a matter of time

I'm afraid today will go down in the history books of "old lefty's" troubles as the day I finally "hit the wall" and I should have seen it coming cause it was only a matter of time my friends.  And when I "hit the wall" (just like when I hit curbs) I generally tend to do it pretty dang hard.  Just for a moment, it got a little bit on the scary side.

You know, I've been doing ok with having my arm broken for the past 5 months now.  I guess I've endured my fair share of troubles with only a few tears shed.  For the past 149 days, I've pressed on, moving towards that FINAL doctor appointment when Dr. Chan and I would bid our farewells to one another.  I'd be pronounced "healed" and finally I'd be able to go home and return to whatever my new "normal" would be.  It wasn't the easiest of things that I'd ever done but I was making it ok.

Today things changed rather quickly and "old lefty" and I went from "sailing in smooth waters" to riding out one heck of a storm that arrived in the form of a panic attack.  In the early afternoon I had gone to school to see what I'd need to do to be ready to return on Tuesday of this week.  I only stayed 30 minutes and then started to head towards home.  Driving north on Plum Street, it started to hit me~this overwhelmingly claustrophobic feeling with regards to the cast on my left arm.  It started out, simply enough, as an itchy feeling deep inside the cast and if you've ever had a cast, well then you know what I'm talking about.  The more I realized that I could never scratch that itch, then the worse it became.  And the worse it became, the more I wanted to get that cast the heck off my arm.  By the time I made it the mile home to my house, I was having one of my mom's famous panic attacks.

It lasted only 20 minutes but it might as well have been 20 hours and as with most panic attacks, the thing I feared (never being able to get rid of my cast) had no rational basis at all.  `If you have ever experienced one, then you understand completely what I'm talking about.  Let me tell you, God got an "earful" from me as I went from believing that having my bike accident on August 4th was the best thing that ever happened to me, to believing that only an idiot would try to jump a curb while riding a bike.  I'm pretty sure I uttered the phrases "I give up!", "I hate this stupid cast!", and "I'm tired of fighting a broken arm!" at least a dozen times and I would be the first to admit that my language was cleaned up for this blog post.  I'm not proud of the way I talk under stress sometimes and today for that 20 minute segment of time, there was stress aplenty.

Have to be honest, more than a few tears were shed by me and I know God and Oblio the round-head cat understood.  Today, on the 150th day of this long journey, I broke, hit the wall, surrendered, threw out the white flag, had it up to "here", and behaved like the fallible human being that we all are.  I lost the focus of this whole ordeal and that was getting "old lefty" healed up once again.  So with black Sharpie in hand, I visited my friend who helped me write the following reminder message on "old lefty's" cast...

This cast has to be worn for 19 more days before it can be removed so in the meantime, whenever I get that feeling of going down a long road by myself, this message will be both the personal and proverbial "kick in the seat of the pants" to remind me otherwise.  How quickly I forgot today.

150 days down....not NEARLY as many left to go~I can do it, I'm positive!  It almost got me today, but I am still more determined than I am afraid!  Good Night All!