Blood, Sweat and Fears

Just when you thought…

June 2020. Bored, deep into the pandemic and with all my clients in holding patterns, I decided to do a large fabric art project I had been thinking about for years. With the aid of some grippy bottom shoes, I fell off the ladder onto the pointy tip of my elbow. Had an ambulance ride, given some delightful drugs and had surgery the next day. I had a Monteggia fracture and a comminuted olecranon fracture which in ortho circles is known as the terrible triad. My arm now consists of a variety of metal, screws, new parts, and possibly some duct tape.

It was the first break of my life. I had gone decades with nothing more than whooping cough, a dog bite, and a few root canals. I was warned that my arm would never be the same. My range of motion would be limited even with physical therapy. Nine months later I was told I could improve that with an elbow capsulectomy (removal of the scar tissue that formed during healing), the “gold standard for elbow stiffness … a simple and reliable procedure …”.

But just when you thought…

During that second “simple” surgery the doctor broke my distal humerus. Yes, the doctor accidently broke a new bone during surgery. The distal humerus is the final cog in a fully functioning elbow joint. It forms the upper part of the elbow and is the spool around which the forearm bends and straightens. I now had the terrible triad injury plus one. Now, more metal and duct tape and not eagerly awaiting the final blow which is post traumatic arthritis.

But something else happened that wasn’t expected. I developed irrational fears. I was suddenly afraid of things I’d never been afraid of before — like falling out of bed. It’s a queen size bed and I’m the only one in it and I’ve never fallen out of bed before. I bought a treadmill because walking outside was another fear. I was afraid of stumbling over a sidewalk crack, having an unleashed dog jump up on me, being startled by a rattlesnake, or just falling over for some random reason. I also don’t like the noise of the street―it makes me anxious now.

Turns out there’s a name for this — kinesiophobia, the fear of injury or reinjury. Of course that is caused by my dystychiphobia, which is a fear of accidents, but the fear of accidents is really because of my agoraphobia, fear of leaving safe environments, and that’s because I have ophidiophobia, a fear of snakes, achluophobia, a fear of darkness, and bathmophobia, a fear of stairs or steep slopes. And all those fears just add to my coulrophobia, fear of clowns, cynophobia, fear of dogs, and of course hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, fear of long words. ;-)