“Jeez, where’d you get that bruise?!” Crankenstein asked as I stood before her in a t-shirt this morning, yawning and stretching.
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” I answered semi-unintelligibly, still yawning.
“Your arm!”
“They’re both bruised and so’s this shoulder,” I said, poking my shirt.
“The big honkin’ one over there,” she exclaimed, pointing to the back of my arm. “How’d you get it?”
As usual, I didn’t know — once you reach a certain level of clumsiness, it takes special circumstances to distinguish one stumble or fumble from all the rest. With the work I’ve done recently in the basement, slowly sorting through stacks of wood and moving things around, there’ve been even more opportunities than usual to knock into sharp, heavy, unforgiving things, which I’ve unintentionally done persistently and with great vigor.
The bruise that caught Crankenstein’s attention hadn’t been on my radar, unlike the tender shoulder contusion that was antagonized by a bra strap for a few days after its birth. Just a week or two earlier she’d asked for a closer look at an angry, swollen bruise on my thigh. I winced when she lightly touched it, and she shook her head in consternation. “Well, that’s a hematoma,” she remarked, and if I hadn’t still been smarting from her exam I would’ve hassled her by demanding “Excuse me, did you just misgender my shematoma?”
My obliviousness to the big honkin’ arm bruise in question (and the 10 to 12 other bruises currently dotting my limbs) is perhaps a testament to how distracting neck problems are — I’m too irritated by that pain and rigidity to notice much of anything else. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, either: I’m falling less since physical therapy and that posed a greater risk to my safety than accidentally walking into walls or bouncing off doorjambs.
Or maybe I’ve just gotten used to it, having racked up an impressive number of falls in the two or three years preceding my first trip (pun intended) to a neurologist. After a few months on levodopa, my legs were practically bruise-free, a welcome change I’d hoped would last longer. But I’m reminded of a doting passage from one of Michael J. Fox’s memoirs, about Gus, a dog almost as big as Fox himself. As you’ve seen with some of my stories about Muriel, movement disorders and canine companions aren’t always the safest mix, but Fox eagerly welcomed Gus to his family, affectionately referring to him as one more thing to trip over.
Once I’m done in the garage, yard, and basement, maybe my legs will become less colorful. But that, too, will probably be fleeting, and that’s OK. I’ll probably be asked “How’d you do that?” a few hundred more times before senility strikes or I kick (and miss) the bucket, so I’ll try to convert a few friends, relatives, and doctors to Rufus Wainwright fandom in the meantime. That way they won’t be confused when I belt a question of my own in response: “Is there anyone else who has slightly mysterious bruises?”