I Could Use A Hand Right Now

Writing a blog post has never really been that easy for me. As I have told some of my friends, I generally take a very long time over each one, either re-writing parts of it or changing the entire direction of the post itself. Sometimes an idea that I have in my head struggles to squeeze out through my fingers and onto the keyboard, and I am left frustrated for days on end with a half-written draft post lying around on my dashboard. Yes, it's hard work being this mediocre.

However, while I have written some rather difficult posts in the past, I feel that this one is by far the hardest post I've ever written.


Because I'm typing it one handed.


So here I am, propped against my bed with my laptop, laboriously shifting positions as I try to find the perfect balance between being comfortable and not blocking the intake fan on my laptop while pecking at my keyboard like some sort of - err - 'differently-abled' person. You see, the weekend was rather - violent - and as a result, the wrist on my right hand has completely died on me. Add to the fact that I think I slept on it wrong as well, and it's no wonder I woke up today feeling like a grenade had gone off in my hand.


After spending almost an hour trying to brush and get dressed in the morning, all the while giving my best Edward Scissor-Hands impression, I ambled upstairs and tried to pretend nothing was wrong. However that plan fell apart within minutes, as my brother and I sat watching the last few minutes of the NBA Finals; he offered me the remote and I said "No thank you."


The alarm bells went off, and pretty soon I was trying to convince mom not to send me to the doctor. She looked me in the eye, gave me a tube of Dicloron, and watched expressionlessly at my failed attempts to squeeze it with my bum hand. Maybe a doctor isn't such a bad idea. But then we're in Sri Lanka, and we all know how it works. We are at the mercy of the doctors, and not just when we're in surgery. I have rarely had to see a doctor, but the few times I have it has always been an unpleasant experience. Some of them, the specialists in particular, hardly work for 3 - 4 hours a day and yet by some miracle still 'treat' around 20 patients an hour. And then they go on strike...


So it wasn't very hard to dissuade the parents from sending me to the doctor, seeing as we didn't even know who to send me to. Our regular doctor only takes patients after 11am, and by that time the traffic would be ridiculous and I'd only be able to go in the evening, by which time either I'd be feeling better or my hand would have fallen off, thus making the trip redundant. This is the argument almost everytime when a trip to the doctor is required: we spend ages wondering if it's really worth the trouble of going to the doctor!


Why is that? As long as I can remember, any trip to the doctor or the hospital has always been met with such opposition. It's almost as if such a trip is only worth the journey and the waiting if the 'patient' is sure to die otherwise! When did taking care of people, even ourselves, become so - difficult?


I blame the doctors. We treat them like gods, they get to park wherever they want, they don't have to pay taxes on their cars and they return the favour by writing some ancient extinct script on a piece of paper and calling it a prescription.