I know last week I said that I may write a short blog given I’d just broken my right wrist, but it turned out I actually gave you a decent length account of that event. This week I have to apologise but this one is definitely going to be brief.
You see I’m supposed to not move my wrist at all, hence the splint and bandage. Actually said bandage now sports a fine overwrapping of duct tape, so as well as the bandage already looking salty and stained (from the sea, peeps) it has a certain extra silver-coated ‘grunt’ quality that surely says ‘dead hard sea woman’!
But as well as glamming it up with duct tape reinforcing, there’s actually a reason for this tape. As I didn’t receive a full hard plaster cast, and because I am having to use my arm to move around the moving yacht and help out as a necessary if shorthanded crew member, I have been hurting my wrist inadvertently. So I was pinned down by the rest of the crew and Baz took his shiny silver roll of tape to my wrist and wound a goodly amount around it. There was one point when the tape got stuck on the roll but he kept twisting my arm that I actually thought he was going to re-break my wrist! But despite the application, it is proving to be useful!
Anyway along with reinforcement, I’ve been trying to carefully keep doing things so I feel useful, but at the same time also not put any strain on my arm. Easier said than done.
Once the large ‘Medicane’ (Mediterranean-hurricane) storm, Zorbas, had passed through Greece last week, we headed north to the island of Ithaca. There we met newbie sailors Phil and Linda, who Mike and Elaine moved on board with, as Mike is now skippering their boat (a 40ft Beneteau Oceanis) from Greece to Turkey. The great part about this is that while we have lost Mike and Elaine as crew, we are now travelling in a flotilla of two, to Kas in Turkey.
The first leg of our journey to Turkey was the longest - from Ithaca, through the Corinth canal, to the island of Poros - which took about 29 hours to complete. As we were going to be doing an overnight passage, Elaine came back on board with us for that leg, so each boat had 3 crew and we could get a better sleep rotation schedule than if just Baz and I were doing that passage ourselves.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I feel the pressure of still needing to be a reasonably competent member of our crew of two because as awesome as Baz is, he simply can’t do everything. So for the next five weeks until I can remove this splint, I have to find ways to accomplish sailing (and other general) tasks with one hand and an immobilised arm. Easier said than done but I am achieving lots of firsts in that department. However, it’s easy to overdo it and then the wrist aches such as during our 29 hour overnight passage where it rained on and off, so I had to put on my weatherproof ‘foulies’ jacket several times. The inner rubber sleeve that prevents water from travelling up the sleeve is a tad tight going over the bandage, and despite carefully pulling it over, it compresses the bones in my wrist which then hurt like hell for a while.
Linda is a retired nurse and has told me how overuse during the healing process can stuff up the bones mending to the point where some people have had to have them re-broken and recast. Well that ain’t a scenario I want to experience, so ‘I’m a Hero’ tendencies are having to take a back step to ‘Mrs Sensible’. Of course that means putting up with feelings of guilt and inadequacy as I conserve my efforts for when they are absolutely needed such as throwing stern lines to a random helpful person on the dock so the boat doesn’t drift while Baz motors back on the anchor as we moor stern to the quay.
Anyhoozle, my lovely reader, after only 4 hours of real sleep in the last 29 or so, and having just totally overworked my very patient wrist, I am going to cut this blog short, while the typing is still coherent.
Until next time, do join me in appreciating the amazing self-healing capacity of the human body.