Survival tips: what to wear

Getting dressed with one arm has been a real struggle. I can somewhat use my forearm now, but I have severe pain if I don’t keep my bicep basically glued to my ribcage. So, no sleeves, pretty much. Definitely no pullovers of any kind. Bottoms are difficult too—I struggle with fasteners one-handed, as well as just getting things on.

I have really been struggling with this! In part just, literally, struggling, because it’s colder now, so can’t just bum around in tank tops or whatever (although spaghetti-strap tank tops have been a lifesaver, because you can just step in an pull them up). But also, it is just really demoralising. I normally enjoy dressing—used to work in vintage clothing, have all sorts of fun pieces, but they’re mostly not injury friendly. I prefer tailored and fitted to baggy and loose, so I can’t button my shirts over my sling easily (I had my arm buttoned into a shirt all day once, and by the end my hand was numb). I can’t wear the tank top with nothing over, because it’s too cold. Pencil skirts that zip up on the left are difficult to put on. It’s too cold for bare legs and tights are impossible. I owned precisely one pair of jogging pants before this, because they’re just not my style. Now I own about six, and I look into the mirror and it’s not my own self looking back. Whiny, but it bugs me.

But I figured out a solution. I ordered a bunch of snap tape. I took a few expendable tops—a couple of hand-me-downs that my kid outgrew, and a black mock-neck pullover I made years ago—ripped out the left side seams (if I really want, I can always re-sew them later, I guess?) and sewed in the snap tape. Voilà! Shirts I can put on. Doing up the snaps is not easy, and on cold days the feel is breezy. But it’s so much better than nothing.

Looks like a normal polo shirt!

Awkward pose, but you can see the snaps!

Then an email popped up, saying, “a seller has offered you a discount on a vintage red cape.” After sighing and wishing I could splurge on such a thing, it occurred to me—capes are perfect when you can’t wear sleeves! It should be here any minute; I keep anxiously running to the porch every time I hear a sound. (My new glasses came today too—almost as good as my old glasses!)

Glasses, new and old

I am sick of the constant jogging pants though (even if I did manage to find one cool pair). And finally, it hit me this morning—suspender tights (warning: NSFW)! Regular tights would be a nightmare to get on one-handed, not to mention having to deal with them again every time you go to the loo. With suspender tights, they’re easier to get into since the hip-to-waist area is basically missing, and once they’re on, underpants go on top, and can go up and down as needed without involving the tights. I think (hope) I have another pair somewhere! 

One thing after another!

Be warned this is kinda gross. The yucky pics are at the bottom of this post; if you don’t want to see them, don’t scroll all the way.

After my fall I got a fitness watch so I could track my heartrate and know when to take a break before things got too far. I am including this pic mainly so one of the gross pics doesn’t end up being the thumbnail for this post.

Mainly putting this pic here as a buffer

The watch was suggested by my concussion pal. Current wisdom says that rather than avoiding everything completely when you have concussion, it’s better to do a little bit, rest a little bit. But take that rest break before you are really feeling that you need it (i.e., before you get symptoms, like headache and nausea in my case).

It’s pretty basic, but does the job. Or, did the job. It was wild to see my heartrate spike to 132 as I slowly shuffled around the grocery store, occasionally needing to lean against the shelving when I lost my balance. It was set to warn me if my heartrate went above 100 or below 50 (I got warned for both of those!) For the first two weeks, it regularly warned me that my resting heartrate (50) was too low, and now it’s happier with me because my resting heartrate is more normal (60). My sleep is crappy and irregular, but no surprise there.

It was also “fun” to count my steps. I’ve never been a pedometer person, but it was instructive to see my daily average of 600 steps climb to 1,200 steps. Just 9,000 more and I’ll be an average sedentary person!

Anyway I’ve been wearing it for three weeks now, taking if off to bathe. 

As my shoulder gets a little better, I can do more with my left hand as long as it isn’t weightbearing (I’ll post about exercises and physio later). One thing I’ve done is go back to two-handed typing. I can only do it for a little while though, and then I start to feel sore. Today I figured out why.

(This is where it gets yucky!)

My skin is rubbing off under the watch strap. I swear it was not like this two days ago! But now I am rubbed raw.

For the time being, my fitness watch has been replaced by ointment and bandages. Photos of my wounds below, so I can find them if I need to show them to one of the docs. I can’t figure out a way to “spoiler” them, so consider yourself warned and stop reading now if you don’t want to see! No more heartrate tracking for me, I guess. It just seems to be one thing after another these days and I am tired of it. 

So that’s why it’s so tender

I had a different worse gross extra problem last week that I don’t even want to talk about.

The story so far

So my fall happened on Saturday 11 October, when my kid was visiting for Thanksgiving and reading week (great to have them here to help out, although it must have sucked for them, and I was probably pushing myself to appear “fine” when I was not). 

Saturday night is never a good time to go to ER, and I did not have a good time. More on that later maybe.

They stitched up my forehead, said nothing was broken asked me to come back Sunday morning at 6:50 for fracture clinic, and if I wanted anything for the pain I would have to wait until then. At fracture clinic, the orthopaedic surgeon told me I did have a fracture, it was just hard to see because the x-ray was not clear, so the night doc missed it. My elbow x-rays had to be re-done because they were not clear at all. Fracture clinic doc said no weightbearing, keep it in the sling (even while sleeping), lost of rest etc., and come back in three weeks (actually the doc said two weeks; the straight-talking admin said it would be three as they’re overbooked and also even with an appointment, I should expect to spend 1-3 hours waiting). I asked if I could see my physio (I already had an appointment that Thursday for my shoulder, more on that later) and he said okay, but not to move my shoulder, only to work on elbow and wrist mobility.

On Thursday, while my kid was visiting their dad, I saw my physio and pretty much broke down crying in his office because I felt so shaky and awful, and it might have been the first time I felt I could cry—the first time I felt someone really saw and understood my pain. I was all vague about how bad my injuries were (because I was in a general cloud of vagueness at that point) and showed him the notes the ER doc sent me home with, but he saw immediately that I had a broken shoulder, I had a concussion, I needed lots of rest and minimal activity. He made sure I was going to see my doctor asap before he let me leave the office.

Then I went to a random clinic to get my stitches out (ER should have provided me with a stitch removal kit, but chose to withhold that, so I had to call around to find a walk-in clinic that had one) followed by a trip to my family doc to get a check-up and a referral to a neuro clinic (I should have given him the one my friend recommended right then! But that’s the thing about concussion, you forget stuff!) and bought myself a doughnut on the way home. I was a wreck. I bumped into someone I knew, almost didn’t recognize them, and then started crying while they backed awkwardly away (part of me wonders—how did he not see that I needed help? I can’t imagine seeing someone in the shape I was in, and not making sure they got home safely).

Oof, that was all hard to write. What an awful first few days. And I left out the hardest parts. Maybe I’ll fill that in later.