David Erchamion: The One Handed

So we went to Mt. Fuji yesterday with friends to go sledging or skating, the latter as it turned out, and I injured myself in true You've been framed! style. Walking to the small skate rink, I suggested we walked down a hill, not the path. Then due to some imbecilic precociousness, and perhaps a nostalgia for childhood wrongfootings, I decided to walk down an icy patch on the hill. Feet came out, arms flailed and I landed on my back. Everything would have been wonderfully comic, though it still is I guess, but when I tried to break my fall with my hand, that slipped too, naturally, and twisted my arm in some impossible contortion.

Suffered relatively silently the rest of the day, and refused to go to the hospital since I reasoned that humans wouldn't have gone to hospitals for millions of years before they were invented. But then I guess humans generally have a more healthy fear of ice than me, as it turned out. I partly rationalise my fall as a result of having suffered no injury within memory; so I thought I was some kind of indestructible Achilles type. Speaking of which, I believe I did some decent ligament and/or tendon damage to my left elbow. Or maybe I actually am indestructible, and it's just my left elbow that is weak? The "David Elbow", one's weakness due to inane stupidity.

After not much sleep, Mariko took me to a doctor this morning. Took a couple of X-rays. He gandered at them for a while and made lots of non-committal Japanese mumblings... not broken as I thought (and hoped) but didn't even suggest ligament injury. Gave me a cold compress (though I really dislike symptomatic treatments), a sling (though I was doing fine with one of Nami's scarves) and some painkillers (see symptomatic treatment dislike). But at least probably not broken, which was the reassurance I was looking for!

Meantime I am one handed like the hero Beren...

A striking likeness

Though temporarily so. And kind of 1.1 handed, the left hand serves as an immobile T-Rex claw for doing light holding work. Meantime, I spent all day watching excellent YouTube videos about the Sumerians...

and good old American economics...

And sleeping...