Well this is a new one for me. Today I went to the doctors and, uninteresting story made short, my left arm was pumped full of stuff. Long term it’s great, but short term it doesn’t half make my life fun.

Said arm is currently in a state of varying nagging pain. Not insufferable, but not ignorable either. It’s a bit like walking through a field of sugar-coated stinging nettles which has been made home to a swam of wasps. Constant background pain with the occasional sharp stab with each false move of the arm. Irritating pain, irritating pain, irritating pain, STAB! Irritating pain, irritating pain, irritating pain, STAB!

Lucky, lucky me.

The result of said niggling pain is a reluctance to move said left arm and keep it as still as possible. In the short term this worked fine, but now it’s debateable what is more noticeable, the tight white bandage or the strawberry red hand which marks the collection point for bodily fluids. Despite appearances I’m still electing to go for ugly hand over hurty arm. Spending a day carrying out tasks with one arm brings no rewards but plenty of challenges. Prepping food, putting headphones on, bodily functions. Right now I am typing this, to the best of my ability, with one hand. In fact not even one hand, one index finger. And my gosh it’s so tedious, every upper case letter takes forever to implement! Going back to correct frequent typos takes forever (if you’re reading this and spotted many missed mistakes I’ve overlooked, sorry but not sorry – same for grammar). I’m currently pumping myself full of sugar to stay motivated enough to type one fingered. There could also be a number of drugs messing with my head, this I’m not too sure of because everything I write is just as equally likely to be natural, wacky, me. It reminds me of the days at school before I learnt to join up writing, when every letter was written out one. By. One. It also reminds me of when Mumma Bennett used to insist on typing each letter on the keyboard.

“Let me help you mum.”
“No, it’s ok.”
“But it’s so painful to watch!”

Today’s events have also reinforced my firmly held belief that very British person chooses to ignore the blinding obvious out of fear of causing offence. Why do we do it? Say no evil, there is no evil (that’s how it works, right?) Returning back to the office from my not so merry outing with a large white bandage it did cross my mind that the fashion statement might come into water cooler dialogue. I had it all prepped, “oh goodness Alice, are you ok?” someone would say. “It’s fine,” I’d wave off “just medication, this is temporary.” Total times I had to pull out this comment? 0. Now, I will accept that I wasn’t particularly desperate to tell my co-workers the full details, but I was surprised by the lack of comment. People looked at the bandage enough, so much that I was actually quite relieved that the medical wrapping wasn’t positioned on my head or chest. They knew it was there, some of them may have even notified my attempts to shift through paperwork one-handed (FYI not easy) but nope, we will let the strangely limp human carry on. It’s character building. I elected not to tell clients on email/phone of this development. When I am chasing for something or vice versa the last thing either of us care about is the state of my left arm. Do you still have four limbs? Yes. Am I getting my quote today? Yes. Ok, well I’d love to chat but I really would rather not. Bye. Simples.

The minor pain will be gone by tomorrow, but going through this makes me value those who have to put up with pain constantly. Fair play to those sorts because, as you can tell, I’ve barely made it through twelve hours without going cuckoo. I feel like Peter Griffin that one time he was in a wheelchair.

(Apologises for image quality, YouTube scroungers can’t be choosers)

I’d like to write more on this but my right arm is beginning to ache from the typing, my left arm has been stung my wasps again and my brain is trying to work out how the stuff to prepare dinner and tomorrow’s lunch with minimal limb usage. It’s going to be interesting and quite likely coffee stained. Who knows, maybe we’ll get a hot beverage burn in there for good measure.