One never realizes how much one uses one’s hands for everyday activities until a tragedy like breaking both wrists dramatically changes one’s outlook. Think of eating, drinking, bathing, dressing, using the bathroom, etc., and you’ll know what I will not be doing solo for the next nine weeks or so.
Immediately after the accident in March 2018, I somehow knew that one or both of my wrists were broken. Feeling helpless by not being able to get up was fortuitous of what my future held. The firemen were on the scene quickly, and I could stand on my two feet. I could feel intense pain if I moved my wrists. If I kept them stationary, the pain was tolerable.
The hospital was a large regional medical center located in Marietta, Georgia. The doctor who attended to me needed X-rays of both wrists to determine the extent of the damage. The pain was intense during the X-ray process, as I needed to keep my wrists and hands as flat as possible on one take, then sideways.
There was no sugarcoating this time. My left wrist was shattered entirely, while my right wrist was more of a clean break. They would need to set it before surgery, so I was anesthetized while they pulled on the wrists. When I awakened, my wrists were all bandaged with a board underneath each wrist to hold it straight. I was scheduled for surgery the following day. When I tried to get off the hospital bed where I had laid, I blurted out, “Oh No! I feel like a turtle lying on its back and can’t get up.” The nurse started cracking up laughing and then quickly apologized for doing so.
Paul was out of surgery; hardware was placed in his wrists to help them heal while holding the bones together. Photo taken early April 2018.
After surgery, my wrists were not put in a cast, as they now use a Velcro immobilizer. This immobilizer acts like a cast, which you can remove once the wrist starts healing. It was about nine weeks for the right wrist to heal well enough to remove the immobilizer and another 3 to 4 weeks later for the left wrist. Then came physical therapy, or as I called it at the beginning, a legalized torture chamber.
The Velcro Immobilizer Cast Shows Super Swollen Hands. You Can Almost Feel The Agony.
The physical therapists were great. The first week was relatively easy, focusing primarily on my wrists and hands. After that, some excruciating exercises were required to build strength in wrists and hands/fingers. There was the beach ball to roll up the wall, cords of varying strength that you would pull on with one or the other wrist, and other exercises to get my fingers moving again.
Physical Therapy was a lengthy process with two broken wrists. My memory seemed to conveniently fade when I tried to remember how many months it took, but I finally was strong enough to be let out in the world again. Wow, what a feeling of joy that this chapter seemed to be over.
The final evaluation after physical therapy is a rude awakening to my new reality. The right wrist was strong, and I would likely regain 95% of my prior strength. However, the left wrist was severely damaged, and the prognosis was not nearly as good. I was looking at maybe 80-85% recovery of what I used to do with the left hand (like playing the guitar).
A View of Paul’s Left Wrist After the “Immobilizer” came off.
So many things were going through my mind. Music was like my church, and I picked up my guitar and tried to play it. The output of my first attempts was thudding, as my fingers would not go where my mind wanted them to. I tried again sometime later, but I got the same result. By this time, I was back at work as an archivist, and I would occasionally glance behind me at one of my guitars that I left in a guitar stand beside my Marshall Amp.
Life Goes On, and the Wrists Continue to Heal. Life is Better.
For the next seven years, I would occasionally dust off the guitar, never playing it and feeling sad that I would likely never play it again. However, I did have one avenue for making music—my Yamaha keyboards, which I could play. My fingers didn’t seem bothered at all while playing the keyboard. But oh, how I missed the guitar.
Life happens; sometimes, it takes you down a path you could never imagine. Over the past seven years, I have moved away from my adopted hometown of Atlanta to a small South Carolina town. Ultimately, I moved to the Milwaukee area to be near my siblings.
It was now October 2024, and my move to Milwaukee was not the smoothest, but I was settling into my new apartment, taking out each guitar and deciding where I would put them. I decided to try and see if I could play anything – think of the lowest bar, which was my expectation. But I was surprised. I was able to see progress in the dexterity of my fingers. Wow, a rush came over me.
Owning a tiny business and being retired allowed me to pursue my dream again—perhaps I would regain much of my previous guitar skills (and even more) and join an “Over the Hill” cover band. The many years that I rarely played (my ex was not a fan of rock) and the seven years that I never played the guitar had taken a toll. I retained the knowledge of some of the things I did with the guitar but discovered I was highly rusty in implementing those skills today.
My tiny business could run itself, so I spent much time getting a feel for what I could do with the guitar. It was almost hideous initially because of the time spent away from playing the guitar. Over the next few weeks, I became more confident about playing the guitar. Life is good.
One thing that helped me through the period, beginning in October 2024, was discovering the School of Rock videos on YouTube. Watching how well the young people played and sang, I wished the School of Rock had existed in 1969. I believe my future would have been significantly different with the experience of performance-based music education.
Perhaps I could be like Dick Clark toted as a perpetual teenager, and seventy would be the new 19. Well, maybe there are 19 years to go, so let’s make them the best!