Baby steps

A month ago, I couldn’t squeeze a stress ball. This morning, I bench-pressed 100 lbs.

Maybe I underplayed the seriousness of the injury I suffered to my hand in that car accident.

It’s my nature; I don’t like to make people worry.

I remember getting out of the car, looking at Nina in all her mangled glory, grabbing my laptop bag and telling an editor I wasn’t going to finish the day. It was 9:45 in the morning.

I tried to act like I was fine. I played tennis the next evening, just to test out the grip of my hand. It hurt like hell.

I didn’t say anything. But I decided then that I needed to see a doctor. My mother was acting anxious. My girlfriend had already threatened to come take care of me. Neither of us could afford for her to make that trip.

“You sound so far away,” she said as we spoke by phone that day.

“I’m laying down,” I said.

It was a lie: I was in the kitchen, standing. The call was on speaker, the phone sitting on the counter. My hand wouldn’t stop shaking as I held the phone.

I worried about not being able to hold her hand, or a cup for that matter. I worried the numbness that came and went wouldn’t subside. I worried, because there was nothing to my pain that the eye could see, that the doctor would tell me to give it time.

When I finally got to him, he told me to work through the pain. My kind of doc.

The accident had also left a large gash on my forehead, fluid on my knee and a lump the size of a golf ball on my shin. When I put my hand to any of them, I couldn’t feel it.

Leaning on my left hand for most of the last two months has been cumbersome. Every so often, I would forget and grab something – a book, my tennis bag, Charlie – with my right hand. Then I’d grimace if no one was around while trying to complete the action.

Ever have a thought that something might change you forever in a way you never expected? I did. And I didn’t know what would happen if my hand never gave me what it used to give.

I set the barbell down and stayed there awhile, reclined on the bench, silent. I almost cried. It had been two months since I even tried to pick up weights in the gym.

After today, I’ll make it much sooner next time.