Finding Joy in the Simple Things

I've been out of commission online lately for several reasons, but the main one I've been wanting to talk about specifically here has to do with one specific incident.  Just over three weeks ago I had a little mishap with a top stair.  My foot caught on it and I fell hard.  Now people have told me in the past that in general I'm quite graceful when I fall, but in this particular incident the graceful touch didn't prevent me from hurting my left arm really bad.  I would share the picture of my bruise on here, but there are people out there who I know are a little squeamish, so I'll spare them the picture.  A large part of my upper arm was covered in bruise.  It was quite a beauty if you want to talk about colors.  The muscles were affected, but thank goodness no breaks, but the muscles were bad enough.

I am a fairly healthy person and I have a lot of pain tolerance (I was one of those crazy people who never took pain killers following wisdom tooth surgery), so this new intro to pain was quite an eye opener.  For the next few nights I was waking up to an aching arm, but thank goodness each day it improved just a little more from the previous.  It required a lot of patience though.  I had to spend the next few weeks having to get help doing things and resting my arm as much as possible.  The simplest of things were difficult to do, including getting dressed for the day.  Working on the computer doing writing and other things was super uncomfortable to do, thus the reason for my neglect.  At this point I still have the bruise, but it's disappearing, and there's still a little tenderness in the muscles, but my arm is functioning at about 90 percent right now.  This experience was good for me in the aspect that I had the opportunity to find the joy in the simplest of things that most able people never think about from day to day.

Being able to dress myself without hurting was a big deal.  I really celebrated when I was able to put my socks on without distress.  I celebrated when I was able to wash my hair without strain.  Being able to unscrew the lids off of bottles was a big deal.  I could go on and on as I celebrated every new step back to getting better.  One of the worst things I struggled with was not being able to support my brother when I was taking care of him, nor being able to put my arm around him.  Seriously, we take so much for granted.  Now that I'm almost able to function completely again, I'm enjoying every single thing that I'm able to do now that I couldn't do a few weeks ago, including being able to prune the roses, which I'm working on right now.  A week or so ago, that wouldn't have been possible for me.

Things are looking up and each day is getting better than the last.  The early flowers are coming out and Spring is well on its way.  Life is good.