Living an Author's Nightmare
A brief update on my wrist injury
Suffering a serious hand or wrist injury is truly a nightmare scenario for an author. Your hands are valuable tools, turning ideas into words and giving them life. Restrict or remove these tools and you hinder an author's ability to channel their creative energies into storytelling.
This nightmare turned into my reality. I felt a pop in my right wrist a few days ago. Pain subsequently spread up the pinky finger side of my hand. It worsened until I could no longer do basic motions, like turn a doorknob, without feeling sharp intense pains. This led to a trip to instacare on Wednesday where I learned what went wrong.
The diagnosis: severe tendonitis.
X-rays turned up negative for a more serious bone or cartilage injury. Still, I’ll be wearing a splint for a minimum of two weeks while my wrist heals. Typing with a splint is as challenging as I expected.
What this means for this newsletter is I won’t be able to do my usual twice-a-week posts during my recovery period. You may see a single short weekly post on Strange New Worlds for the near future. I hope to return to my normal writing schedule in early June once I regain full strength in my right wrist.
I hate being limited by a wrist injury. Still, I’d rather undertake a lighter workload for a couple of weeks than risk further damage to my tendon and undergo wrist surgery that would sideline me for a minimum of 8 to 10 weeks.
On the positive side, this will give me a chance to map out a more concrete plan for stories, poems, and articles I want to share throughout the summer.
One irony is my right hand and wrist have typically been healthy while I’ve endured multiple serious injuries to my left hand and wrist in the past. Some injuries to that limb were horror movie level gruesome.
My left hand was partially severed by a can lid in a freak accident when I was barely a year old. Surgeons saved my hand, but I suffered permanent nerve and tendon damage (including a slightly curled index finger) and I sport a gnarly scar across my palm. I crashed into rebar when I fell off a tricycle a few years later and ripped open my left ring finger. Then I suffered a severe double fracture in my left wrist after falling out of a swing set during the summer before I started fourth grade.
Enduring those injuries give me a greater appreciation for what I’ve accomplished as a journalist and as an author. I consider being able to write a blessing from God and a miracle of science, since modern medicine saved my left hand at an early age.
Make Contact with Alien People
I’m running a special sale over Memorial Day weekend on Alien People — the first installment in my Alien People Chronicles trilogy. If you haven't read my popular sci-fi adventure series yet, now's the perfect time to get started.
Download the Alien People eBook for only $0.99 (USD). This sale is happening at all major booksellers, but only lasts through Monday. If you’ve already read my novel, the eBook would make a nice inexpensive gift to give to a friend or relative who loves to read suspenseful science fiction stories.
If you subscribe to either Kobo Plus or Scribd, you can also read Alien People and my other stories through those services.
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Holy cow, I’m sorry. Your hands are your livelihood. Hoping for a quick recovery so you can get back to great writing.