Thursday, January 8, 2009

hole in the bone

Nearly eight months after my cycling accident that left me with a shattered wrist, I'm still not completely healed and it's beginning to be a possibility that I may never be completely back to normal. Fortunately, the hand itself is OK and I have good movement in all my fingers (typing is not a problem). But there's a significant gap in the bone material of the radius, on the side of the bone near the ulna, near where the bone connects to the wrist.

For the last few months my doctor and I have been trying to get the bone to regrow. I've been wearing a brace for support, taking supplements of calcium, and wearing a "bone stimulator" which is a device that creates an electro-magnetic field over the broken area and induces bone growth. However, the gap has not closed, and it now seems likely that the exposed areas have become scarred over, which would prevent healthy bone from growing.

The next steps would begin with putting a camera inside the wrist to see whether there is any living bone at the break that could support new growth, and if there is then filing the gap with bone graft, perhaps taken from my hip. If there is no living bone then the only option might be to fuse the radius bone with the first line of wrist bones. That would limit mobility but would give me enough strength that I could resume most of the use of my right hand.

Needless to say there has been a lot of opportunity and time for spiritual reflection about all this. I've been depressed. I've confronted feelings of shame (I'm not a perfect cyclist who always pays perfect attention). I've acknowledged my age and mortality. I've tried to develop patience. I've thought about the process of healing and whether there's a place for God in the process or is it just up to me and my doctor. But like the injury itself, which still remains unresolved, my spiritual musings are also incomplete. I don't know what it means. I don't know what it's for. The experience doesn't seem valuable to me, just awful. I don't believe that we have experiences in order to learn certain lessons (the experiences aren't caused purposefully) but I do believe that spiritual growth comes from examining our experience. As of yet I haven't figured out how to make this experience benefit me.

2 comments:

Robin Edgar said...

Maybe there isn't one Ricky. I am not sue that we are supposed to benefit from all life's experiences, even less so life's negative and harmful experiences. Maybe we just have to accept them for what they are, even when they are what insurance companies call an "Act of God". . . I believe that *some* but, by no means all, experiences are in fact caused purposefully in order to learn certain lessons. My own experiences of very high level synchronicity have convinced me o this. Some coincidences aka "accidents" are not accidental but OTOH plenty of accidents are just accidents. I wish you the best and hope that one way or another you will heal as much as is *possible* both physically and psychologically from your bicycle accident which was probably just an accident.

Best Wishes,

Robin Edgar

Robin Edgar said...

Oh and Happy* New Year Rev. Ricky



*Happy as *possible* that is. :-)