Five days after surgery I was off to the cast clinic for a check-up and a proper cast. I gave some thought to the color to get, but all my deliberations kept bringing me back to black. So basic. I’m going to try to do some artwork on the cast, and at least a black background always looks good. Don’t worry, I’ll post anything I manage to add to the cast. Are you surprised?

The cast clinic runs a bit like a factory assembly line with four people sitting on either side of two beds waiting for their turn with the surgeon. Very efficient for the doctor, less efficient for the patients, but what’s new? After waiting an appropriate and boring length of time, my partial cast from surgery was removed and I was able to wash and touch my arm. That felt good, especially knowing that soon enough those two activities would be unavailable to my poor left forearm. I was surprised to see how swollen my hand and wrist were since they felt pretty normal. For some reason I developed a HUGE amount of bruising after surgery. I’m talking wife-abuse talk-to-social-services kind of bruising. Fortunately no one even seemed to notice. Apparently it’s fairly “normal” even if I didn’t get it last time. Good thing I like color. You don’t get the full effect here – hospital lighting is so useless! I think you can get an idea of the effected area. Even my palm turned purple! I forgot how creepy the pin sticking out of my hand would look. (Think Frankenstein on a very small-scale.) Probably because the mind is good at forgetting things that are unpleasant, and I classify this pin as “unpleasant”. (I decided against a close up shot of the pin because I thought I might make you sick.)