What I’ve learned from broken bones and painkillers

Thanks mostly to a potent mix of stu­pidity, tequila, and my own inter­minable love of over-enthusiastic wrestling matches, I’ve man­aged to break a bone. (I did tempt fate that night by saying I’d never broken one before, so I sup­pose I shouldn’t have been sur­prised by the out­come, really.)

Not being one to ever do any­thing the half-assed way, I of course man­aged a really nasty, painful break in my right wrist. After seven hours in the ER, three dif­ferent sets of x-rays, and numerous doc­tors drop­ping by to poke me about, stick nee­dles in me, and ask me quite seri­ously if I’d been assaulted, they sent me home in a cast that runs from my fin­ger­tips to my bicep, with a handful of painkillers and no assur­ances that I wouldn’t need to be back for surgery in a week.

The ensuing week has been a bit of a mess, but it’s taught me all sorts of valu­able lessons already.

1. Flat-rate is still best-rate.

I’ve briefly men­tioned this before, but I still do believe that charging flat-rate for the majority of my work (I switched over almost a year ago and haven’t looked back) is the best choice for both me and my clients. While it’s presently taking me a little longer than usual to get my work done (typing emails is slow, coding web­sites is painful, and resizing ele­ments non-numerically is almost impos­sible), I don’t believe that my clients ought to be penal­ized for what ulti­mately boils down to my own lack of fore­sight. Usu­ally, this func­tions in the reverse for me—I’m not penal­ized when I manage to get some­thing done more quickly than expected, so I don’t mind that it doesn’t work out in my favour right now.

2. I really, really love being a graphic designer.

During some of my more intense moments of panic, I started trying to come up with suit­able alter­na­tive careers. (You know, in case I get bone necrosis and the damned thing never works again. Thanks, Wikipedia, for con­stantly feeding my para­noid hypochon­dria!) I orig­i­nally went into design as a way to more effec­tively pay my way through uni­ver­sity, then fell in love and never looked back. (I’d still like to finish my uni­ver­sity degree—if I ever win the lottery—but I’d be more likely to study design now.) While there are all sorts of indus­tries I’m inter­ested in, there’s nothing I can think of that’s as cre­atively stim­u­lating, dynamic, and chal­lenging as what I’m presently doing.

3. I have the greatest clients, and friends, in the world.

This may just be the Per­co­cets talking, but I don’t think I would have man­aged to fight through this week were it not for the mas­sive amount of sup­port I’ve received from the people in my life. I’m gen­er­ally on the “rag­ingly inde­pen­dent” side, so it’s hard for me to ask for help with any­thing. Some things, like putting my hair in a pony­tail, are impos­sible to do, while other tasks are just frus­trating and time-consuming. I’m also quit­ting smoking, as nico­tine reduces blood flow and slows healing sig­nif­i­cantly, so on top of being in almost con­stant pain and crazy frus­trated, I’m cranky and suf­fering with­drawal symptoms!

But my friends have cooked me din­ners and helped me with all the tiny daily tasks I’m finding so chal­lenging, have enter­tained me for hours in the ER when I thought I’d go insane, have left draw­ings all over my cast, and have made me feel loved and like I’m not alone at all. My clients have been just as sup­portive, in dif­ferent ways, making allowances for the fact that I need a little more time to com­plete tasks, and either not caring or not noticing my painkiller-induced loopiness.

My super-sexy cast, com­plete with “pain killer” mon­ster. Come on down and sign it: I’ve got scented markers and lits of extra space!

In short, I may be in a giant cast, but I’m the luck­iest girl in the world.

Tags: balance, life