The psychological toll of fracturing your humerus : updated

It's 5:13am. 

I'm freshly 1 year married. Have a child on the way and a wonderful wife and family.

When you hear a friend fractures (in this case in using the medical term, which some may think I only hairline fractured, but it was a clean break) their arm, you think "it will be okay in a couple months". Although this is true for the actual fracture and use of your arm to a certain extent. I sit here unable to sleep even remotely close to the whole night. 

The psychological and emotional toll that it has taken on me is extremely high. I cannot speak on all fractures, but mine is particular of the right dominant humerus has been a nightmare.

My first few days were spent mostly in bed where I would get pretty emotional. This was due to the fact of how worried my wife and parents were. My beautiful wife had a hard time adjusting to the situation, but now is fine and embracing the fact I need help sometimes to do mundane tasks. We call it practice for our child on the way. 

If you have friends or family who go through a similar fracture, check up on them. Having my friends and coworkers care about my progress and health helped out a lot. 

People don't think about it, but this fracture takes a toll on you. You become helpless, needy, and most of all depressed. It starts out with the fact you cannot do what you used to. I must relearn a lot of tasks to use my left arm. Feeding, going to the toilet, brushing my teeth, dressing and etc. Then you cannot drive, work properly or even dress the same. I find myself always in a tshirt and shorts. You have to be extremely mindful when out, because this society of walking and texting is so prevalent that you never know who could bump you and take away all the healing process you've gone through. The sleepless nights will take a huge toll. Waking up in extreme pain, stiffness and frustration will make your night worse. Pain and sleep medication only help so much. Sleeping in a chair upright is uncomfortable, but necessary. You become secluded, as you have bad days and good. Sometimes you just want to stay home and rot. When you are home alone, it's lonely, you can ask people to come over and keep you company, but then it impacts your day, as they'll see you weak and might require their help, but then you cannot just go and take a nap as you'll feel like you need to entertain your guests. If you're like me, sometimes you get visitors when you just want to be alone.

The thing that helps me the most is celebrating small wins with my wife. Being able to dress myself was a huge deal to me. It helped a lot. Maybe I'm being dramatic or maybe this accident was just the icing on the cake as there have been other stressful situations in the past year.

All I can tell you is to recognize anyone you may know who has fractured a dominant arm. As they could be acting very upbeat to you, but maybe yearn for that attention in the background. It helps a lot when people care about you during the healing process. 

Update: I've learned that when you get a better night sleep, your body is more painful and sore in the morning, probably because I'm not getting up every hour to walk around and get the blood flowing. The less sleep you get as in you wake up often to stretch and walk around for blood flow, you'll be far less sore in the morning. At this point I'm not sure what I'd prefer.