The Fingers Work!

For the last two months, I have been working more steadily, using it as a form of Occupational Therapy for my still-healing hands. The worst damage to my hands was my right index finger, and the meaty spot between that and the thumb. It was an open hole that required a skin graft (before that, I could see the bones of my right index finger).

Each week I can work longer before I need to stop and stretch my hands out. I still make myself write out my notes by hand. I think from the outside, my handwriting looks fine, but it's not quite where it used to be. I am working my way back towards my sloping, beautiful cursive.

I have to be honest though... those first days in the hospital ICU, I was afraid I would never be able to use my hand again. So I have gratitude for how much I *can* use it, and everything else that comes will be an added bonus.

Still, there's a truth to the notion that you don't know what you really care about until you almost lose it. The things that I love flipped through my heart, and I spent one night, unbeknownst to me until months later, regaling my hospital appointed babysitter- I had taken a nosedive out of bed high on the coma drugs- with all the stories I still had in me that I wanted to write. She told me I said it was what I needed to live for.

"I'm not done yet," I said. Nothing else has been more true.