So, I broke both my wrists...

So, I broke both my wrists.  Both of them.  Crack!  It happened in seconds.  I was locked out of my apartment.  It was late.  I thought, “No problem, I’ll just climb right up to the fire escape and go through my kitchen window,” which I routinely kept unlocked because I had once taken a look at the fire escape and the protruding, seemingly-climbable bricks on the side of the wall below it and thought “Hmmm…if I’m ever locked out I can just get in that way.  Easy!”

It didn’t go as planned.

I remember the moment I realized I was going to fall.  I had climbed up a couple dozen feet of brick wall and felt pretty confident about the transfer to the fire escape.  I reached back to grip it, and I felt my other hand slipping.  It was out of my control at that point.  Crack!  Sir Isaac was right.

I like to think that I reacted like a cat.  That I spun around in the air from my back-facing position and let out a subtle purr before I broke my fall…and my cheekbone…and my eye socket…and my right wrist…and my left wrist.

I suppose I laid there, in a pool of my own blood as they say, for a little while.  It was around midnight in a particularly nice neighborhood in San Francisco.  The kind of neighborhood where people don’t walk around outdoors much at midnight.  Eventually, I woke up and looked at my wrists.  Sometimes one’s palms are facing them.  And that was true in this case.  But the way my arms were positioned, I was pretty sure I should have been staring at my knuckles.  My immediate thought was:  “Now how am I going to get up there to sleep this off?”

An hour or so later, I walked alone into an Emergency Room.  I remember looking at my crumpled wrists after the fall, and I remember walking into that ER, but I do not remember the interim.  I believe there must have been an intervening Samaritan, but I don’t know who it was.  Was it you?  If anyone out there helped a rather unsightly and disfigured young man, wearing a stylish black suit, to an emergency room in a nice neighborhood of San Francisco at midnight recently, please contact me.  And tell me why you wouldn’t escort me through the frickin' ER door!  Was it really that much further to take me?  Was I bleeding on your precious purse?  What if I’d have tripped on the way in?  I think I will write you a Missed Connection on Craigslist.

The woman at the front desk told me she had some forms for me to sign.  This is where my memory returns.  I did not sign the forms.  Instead, I held up my mangled arms.  That is mangled-armeded-person speak for “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not sign those forms.”

A doctor saw me, despite my inability to write down my address and phone number and to check a box for whether I was experiencing any pain.  She fixed me.  By fixed me, I mean she told me to hold my breath and reach out my arms, and then she pulled on both my hands, and repositioned them so that they were facing the right way.  I checked.  Yep!  Those are my knuckles now.  Much better.

I ended up having surgery on my face and both arms over the course of two weeks.  All the nurses call me “Spiderman,” with subtle irony after my wall-scaling ability.  Robocop is more appropriate.  I am chock-full of titanium.  Some of it will be taken out with later surgeries.  Some of it will stay, and become a part of me, and enable me to sense human body heat and fire lasers out of my eyes.

I am still in the healing process.  There was a time when I could do nothing.  Literally, nothing.  Now I can do most things.  I can even type, though not as fast as before.  That is why every word that I write here is so carefully thought-out and eloquent.  Because it takes longer to produce each one, so I must be more particular.

I moved to Seattle and started a new job a couple of weeks ago.  It was a couple of weeks after my surgeries.  I called ahead to tell them that I would be disfigured.  Luckily, I am not a model or a yo-yo champion.  But still, I feel a little bad for my new employer; they thought they were hiring a much better looking fellow.  A fellow who would maybe play ping pong with his co-workers on occasion, or be able to operate a stapler without using his chin.

I took a profile picture for the company website today.  I was very nervous about it beforehand.  When you get surgery on your face, it disturbs the nerves quite a bit and takes time for them to get sorted out.  For the longest time, it hurt for me to smile.  I got mad whenever anyone cracked a joke and then I would laugh and cry at the same time.  And not in a "I'm crying because it is so funny" way,"but in a "I'm crying because it is excruciatingly painful" way.  It is a little funny in retrospect.  It was even funny at the time, but that just made it more painful.  Anyway, now smiling does not hurt, but my grin is a little droopy.  Half of my face is still a bit numb, though it is no longer swollen, and no longer that noticeable, unless you stare at it in a mirror for hour after hour, which I do.  So pictures are nerve-racking.  Hehe, sorry.

I think the picture came out okay, but it is only thanks to a good photographer, creative lighting, and Photoshop.  It makes me really wonder what all those Maxim girls really look like in person.  They might all have swollen faces and subconjunctival hemorrhages.

I have been to many doctors lately.  Sometimes I try to memorize the words they say like “subconjunctival hemorrhage” and then I drop them in a sentence like it’s no big deal.  I don’t even flinch.  I am very matter of fact about it.

I am the pride and joy of my physical therapy clinic.  They are very impressed with me.  I am well ahead of schedule in my movements.  I can now touch my thumb to each finger, rotate my wrists to almost 85 degrees each way, and bend my left wrist to about 50 degrees forward and 45 degrees back.  I can also high five with a person of below-average strength and I can almost make the live long and prosper sign.  That’s all meant to impress you.  Unless you are recovering from a broken wrist -- then it is meant to put you to shame.  Do your exercises, loser.

Some people say how lucky I am.  And it’s true, in a way.  I survived.  I will make just about a full recovery.  I can supinate my wrist to almost 90 degrees.  (Ha, did it again!)  My swelling has gone way down.  I live in a time of Photoshop.  On the other hand, I did not make it up to my kitchen window to get to sleep that night.  And I had been leaving that kitchen window unlocked day after day for no reason.  I guess it’s all relative.

So how does this relate to the Mariners?  Well, I don’t know.  Relax.  I’ll get to that.  But don’t you think there are more important things to think about?  Yeah, you have two working wrists and a winning smile now, but that could all be taken away from you in a freak accident after your attempt to scale a wall in the middle of the night.

I guess it relates to the Mariners because this is the only place I have to write down thoughts and receive comments and this blog is about the Mariners.  But also because of how much I enjoyed this season.  The Mariners were out of the playoff hunt from late-July on.  Griffey did not hit 45 homeruns and win the batting crown like I thought he would after the first game.  Three of the guys I was most looking forward to watching at the start of the season (Bedard, Morrow, and Clement) did not break through and become great players.  We had our injuries.  We had our heart-breaking losses.  Our top prospect fractured his fibula.

But all that said, it was my most enjoyable season as a fan since 2001.  Easily.  There is hope.  There is progress.  There are reasoned hands at the reins.  There is Felix Hernandez.

When one breaks his cheekbone…and his eye socket…and his right wrist…and his left wrist…and suffers a subconjunctival hemorrhage, one learns the importance of taking a step back and not taking anything for granted.  There were so many great moments this season.  There are so many great things to love about this team moving forward.  So many exciting players in the big leagues and in the minors.  And if things go a bit wrong, we have Photoshop.

I am not taking any of it for granted.