I make progress...

On Friday my cast came off!! Hurrah, free at last, free, free...

Actually, while I may be technically free, my right forearm is almost completely immobile, and my wrist is aching more than it has done in weeks. But the wretched, chafing, clunking, bally great cast is off. Gone. Kaput.

I have a Fortuna splint, but have been advised not to use it more than is absolutely essential. I'm practising gently pivoting my arm through the limited degrees of the circle that it will cover (about 55 degrees out of the usual 355 or so) and waggling it back and forth through the roughly 35 degrees (out of the normal 170-ish) that it will flex laterally. And still doing my tendon exercises. And hoping for the best.

At least I'm now allowed to lift small items. I can raise an apple to my mouth! - though once there, I have to move my mouth round the apple rather than turning the apple about in front of the mouth. Still, this is progress. But it is bizarre to reflect that the wrist is in normal circumstances one of the most flexible joints in the human body. It sticks out, this limb of mine, a frail flipper, swollen and nobbly, its scant remaining muscles floppy with weakness, its pallid skin dry and pimpled. Down the soft fleshy side runs a dramatic scar, pinkly puckered, rigid and tender. But free, free, free...

The best moment was when the consultant held out his pinkie finger to me, as one would to a baby, and said "Will you hold my finger, please?" I reached up and gave it a good squeeze, and he beamed; "Excellent grip, well done!" So the creepy-looking finger exercises have paid off. I'm not used to going around squeezing strange men's fingers...

Friday afternoon, when I got out of the hospital at last, I took a train down to my mum's in Kent, feeling rather shell-shocked, and spent most of the rest of the weekend sleeping on her sofa while the heavy white frost fell in the garden. Now I'm back at work, and back discovering what I can and can't do; all of which has subtley but definitely changed from when I had the cast. I am slower at getting dressed, for instance, but I can now walk briskly without jolting myself painfully. It will be a long time before I go dancing again, though. But by Thursday when I go to the Festival Hall to hear the Bartok "Concerto for Orchestra", I just might be able to applaud, at least softly, at least for a few seconds, in the normal way, instead of thrashing my left leg resoundingly. Which feels quite as weird (and painful), and looks just as kinky, as it sounds.

Plenty of great sportsmen have made full recoveries from worse injuries, as has Favourite Baritone, and as have innumerable dancers. Now I get to share what thay have been through.

And there are more snowdrops out at work. Progress all round; every day, and every experience, a new piece of the richness of life to savour.