Pain

I sprained my wrist, thought it wasn't a big deal, but it was:: ORIGINALLY POSTED ON FEBRUARY 14th 2024

Dear soft heart,

On November 2nd, I fell down my stairs in my house and sprained my left wrist so bad that I initially thought it was broken. I have never had shock pain such as this, and I was stunned by how much it hurt. I don’t think I’ve ever howled the way I did that afternoon - it felt like something deeply primal was coming out of me, I didn’t even know I was capable of these sounds until that moment.

When I made my way to the doctor’s, I was told that my EDS, my hypermobility, is what prevented me from breaking it entirely.

For once, EDS proved useful here, they said, holding my arm, doing all sorts of manual tests on it.

“Does this hurt?”

“Yes.”

“How about this?”

“Also yes.”

I can bend a lot before breaking, the doc said. What a metaphor, I thought.

Still my sprain was pretty bad, the worse you could get, the doc proclaimed clearly. We did a few more tests, and did a bit of deep tissue laser therapy to remove inflammation. It got bandaged up, and I was advised to be very careful with it all. We’d re-evaluate again soon. What ensued afterward was this truly giant amount of pain - my wrist hurt yes, I couldn’t put any weight on it (I’ve barely been able to even now, 3 and a half months later), I couldn’t twist salt out from the salt dispenser, open up cans or bottles, or even wave with my left hand! So yes my hand, and my wrist hurt and mobility was restricted, but so did everywhere I absorbed the shock - my elbow, my shoulder, god my shoulder blade hurt so bad, my rib cage. Many days in the past several months, it has hurt to breathe.

It felt similarly to fibro pain I got when I was younger - as though my entire rib cage was a bruise and each breath I took, in and out, felt like someone stuffing their fingers directly into a fresh and tender blueish purpleish mark. The amount of inflammation this injury triggered in my body was unreal. Migraines, nerve pain, everything I did not want… there. I got overstimulated easier too.

I’ve gotten into car accidents before where I’ve had injuries, and also broke my leg was I was little. I also live with hypermobile muscles and joints and so I’ve gotten knee injuries, and all sorts of aches and pains, and things like aura migraines. But nothing compared to this wrist sprain.

This wrist sprain was next level. Wasn’t it just a wrist sprain? Why does it hurt so much, why is my whole body in this much pain? I could sense my strong part taking over - we are tough enough to not complain during or about a wrist sprain. It’s not even broken.

Then, I remembered how my somatic teachers often viewed and worked with and taught how to work with sprains, breaks, and various injuries as event traumas too. Maybe this was a big deal. My body surely thought so.

The thing is that when I fell, my mom wasn’t working at the time and rushed to me, panicked but extremely attuned. She was worried and told me later that she thought about dialling 911, but she stayed calm and grounded and rubbed my back and told me to let it all out and stayed with me as I did. I stripped from clothing and just rocked back and forth eventually when I was done screaming, and howling and crying. Then I went into the bath and was brought liquids and food and was well taken care of. If you’re familiar with Peter Levine’s work, you’ll know that when a trauma happens, like an injury, if we are met with attunement by safe people, and can discharge our stress responses well, the traumatic event doesn’t stay with us somatically very much. It’s called after-care.

Let’s say, I fell, no one was there, and I did not let out a sound in fear of freaking out neighbors, or maybe let’s say, someone was there, but they told me to get up and to stop crying, or maybe I wouldn’t have cried or howled, because I was embarrassed and didn’t want anyone thinking I was too much or being too dramatic. At this point, I wouldn’t have let out of my stress response very much or been attuned to in the pain of it all - having validating eyes on us when we are in pain helps the pain resolve because it helps us confirm our experience - shared experience is valuable to orient ourselves with.

So, I had excellent after-care from the initial shock of the fall, but the way the injury was impacting me, I was dismissing a bit, as just a sprain - surely it shouldn’t be all encompassing like this. It bothered me that it was. I couldn’t get around it. My body was like: all I care about is how much pain I am in. I want love and attention and solutions and more attention. I am in pain. I want the pain to stop! Make it stop! I am in pain. Ouch this way. Ouch this other way. I can not even be still without thinking only of the pain.

I kept thinking of what the doctor said, I can bend a lot before I break.

I started thinking of this injury in the metaphor terms of this comment, because I was curious about it - what did it all mean? And what was it showing me?

I arrived to the idea that when you are someone who can bend a lot before you break, you are most likely someone who dismisses their pain more readily than others, because if you were excellent at acknowledging your pain, like truly fully and wholly, you would probably break more often. And what this injury was teaching me was to not bend, not to stretch out even a little more, simply to break - to acknowledge the pain truly fully and wholly. I learnt that it was my validating eyes that I craved too - to confirm my experience - the pain was real.