The Finger Of God. Again. (Part I of III)

Some day I should take an ankle selfie and post it to this reflection. But it's midnight and there's no way that's gonna happen tonight. What would the photo show if it were here? Two ankles, of course. And a 3-inch scar running down each of them.

Yes, I've ruptured both of my Achilles tendons. (It's funny how you learn the technical jargon of anything in your body that you break. I know what a clavicle is, and if you've broken one you surely know that word too.)

To rupture one of those tendons is a rare feat (feet?), but to rupture both puts me in rarefied air, especially since I did one in as a young kid fresh out of college. (It typically happens to weekend warriors in their forties.) So people are usually curious how I pulled off this dubious achievement.

The answer isn't exciting. I was in a racquetball court on both (separate) occasions. But that just explains where I was. The question of Why is a bit more tricky. I can grin and say, "My Achilles heel is my Achilles' heel", and that's good for a smile. But in a more serious response to that question, I often say (or at least think to myself), "The finger of God swept by..."

Why would God's finger swoop past my ankle and leave me critically injured? I don't know. But that answer works as well as any other. God touched Jacob's hip. He touched my ankle. Go figure.

But I don't think of it as a blame game, and furthermore I trust God with these random (or not-so-random) events. (The irony here is that I've reflected recently on the question of randomness–or lack thereof–in life.)

All I know is, aside from those doozies, I've been largely free of stitches.

(Yeah, here it comes...)

Until Sunday. A few days ago I was washing dishes (husbands, take note... this activity can be dangerous!) and went to rinse a Pyrex casserole dish. Whups. It slipped out of my hand. No biggie, right? Well... no. It fell an inch or two (or four?) hit the edge of the sink at the wrong angle and (quite literally) shattered into hundreds of pieces.

And one of those pieces passed by my right thumb. It left a calling card, too. A big long slice. One instant I am perfectly healthy. The next instant...

The finger of God returns. (Or was it a thumb this time?)

Yeah, doesn't look like something you'd do for entertainment, but on the other hand, it doesn't look too serious. Right?

Wrong. Looks can be deceiving. While in the ER, I was struck by the fact that I could not pull my thumb toward my palm. Echoes of a certain ankle injury... But no matter, this is just a thumb, right?

Wrong. The folks in the ER did a nice job of cleaning it up and stitching it, but they didn't seem too keen to mess with my thumb. I was irritated. I'm here. The wound is open. Just go in there and fix it up while we're here?

No.

And to cut (!) a long story, short, I have since discovered that this injury is anything but simple. Tomorrow morning in the wee hours after dawn, I'm going under general anesthesia. And they will attempt to repair a tendon that will not be making anything about the task easy.

Suffice it to say, I will say here that it is simply a mystery to me why I have such a talent for wreaking serious havoc with tendons. What I managed to do while standing in front of a kitchen sink seems to rival the first achilles rupture, which I effected while standing still.

Goooo figure. Lord willing, I'll cover two thoughts in my next reflection. First, why this surgery is going to be so bloody complicated, and second, why that fact makes me wish I had been less frustrated with the health professionals looking after me over the past few days.