My arm feels much better today.
I still can’t straighten my arm all the way out without bad pain, but the spasms are gone, and I can take pressure on it. I’ve stopped wearing the cast for anything other than sleeping and going out. Everytime I straighten my arm, I can sense it’s a little further, and I’m not letting the pain put me off. Healing is occurring.
The doctor says unless I get this surgery to have the bone pinned back where it kind of cracked off, it’ll never come back 100%. Well, I have faith it will, but it’s definitely going into my request for compensation.
I suppose it’s very easy not to think about these things; breaking bones, disease, pain and maybe it’s a good thing we don’t.
It’s amazing how simple things like straightening your arm, and being able to lift things, and using your body in general, become the difference between a good day and bad. The ability to watch a sink of dishes, and do a load of laundry without tears smarting your eyes, because cause for victory dances and joy.
The thing is, as I lay there, my backpack the only thing separating me from the rough, dusty asphalt that used to be where you’d pull up to drop people off to the cavernous, yet very small check in area at the Grantley Adams airport, pain shooting to every sensual receptor that I had, stunned, wind gone out of me completely, two thoughts came to my mind. One, this is a blessing. Two, I hope my mother hadn’t already left.
As dozens and dozens of people seemed to surround me, all of them asking me, “Do ya want me ta call de narse.” All I could think of, to say was, in a steady calm, voice was, “If you go right now, you’ll find my mother and grandmother in the car park. Ms Lord, is her name. Ms. Toppin is the old lady with her.”
I didn’t actually start to process pain, fright and anxiety yet. When my mother showed up, is when it hit me that something was dreadfully wrong with me.
I started to cry, but there was a voice inside me saying, “This is a blessing, a blessing, a blessing, a blessing, a blessing, a blessing, a blessing, a blessing. Modupe.”
For the first time in my life, my mother did not make a bad situation worse. She knew exactly what to do. I was glad when I saw her face above me. She asked me calmly, but very concerned, “What happened?”
“Well I bloody fell, is what happened!”
“Well what hurts?” She asked.
“My ankle, but my arm as well.”
She put her arms under me, and she said, “Well let’s see if we can get you to sit up.”
She half hoisted me, as I raised myself, and sat up I did. I leaned on the boards that covered the area of the airport that they were working on, and just breathed. My mother started cracking off orders, “Get ice! As much as you can.”
That was how it went.
The voice inside me, Mama Kambiri would say it was Osun whispering to me, “This is a blessing, it’s a blessing,” went on and is still whispering it to me, through all the pain.
So this is what I am looking at it as. I was so sorrowful that I had spent my entire vacation hustling. I now in the process of spending almost another month, to rest and worry about nothing more than healing and reading.
I don’t want to speak to soon, but I am going to get me the best lawyer I can afford, and I am going to demand compensation from the Barbados government for the incompetence of their decision making process regarding sign-age, and their staff who put me on the plane with an arm fractured in three places and dislocated.
I want some money for this. Gone is that girl who let shit like this slide. I’ve already spent almost a third of my salary on this arm in doctor’s fees, and I need surgery like I said before.
This is a blessing.
My life is rich in metaphor. I see poetry in the world around me, and I think God is a master painter, even if what I see and feel is sometimes disturbing.
My soundtrack today was “What the hook gon’ be?” by Murphy Lee…
See, I’ve decided I don’t need a hook for this beat. All I need is a beat in the background, my headphones on, and I’m going to rip shit!
My appointment with the lawyer is set for next Monday.
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