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September 23, 2009

Learning the Hard Way

Written by Girth McDürchstein on September 23, 2009 10:14 PM
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Well, here I am again. I’ve had a deluge of e-mails and MySpace messages regarding my wrist surgery. Some have wished me well, but a surprising number have been outright hostile. I appreciate fans savoring for some more Abysmal, especially since our last album’s delays ultimately led to us abandoning the project. Never fear, folks—I could never ditch something as rich and rewarding as Fuck Machines.

However, I must confess that recovery time for my surgery took much longer than expected. In fact, I’m still recovering, slowly but surely.

Here’s the skinny: when a person injures his or her triangular fibrocartilage complex, an orthopedic surgeon has two courses of action: repair the tear, or debride the scar tissue surrounding the tear, which theoretically will reduce the pain around the joint. Repair of the damaged tissue involves a much lengthier and more complicated recovery process than debridement. Unfortunately, with injuries such as this, not even an incredibly expensive MRI (paid for by the good people at Metzler-Rinbaum & Associates) can show the full extent of the damage. A surgeon will only know how to proceed once he’s jammed an arthroscope into the patient’s wrist joint and started poking around. Strongly suspecting he’d only be able to do a debridement, Dr. Hunzinbergel left me believing that I’d go in for surgery on Thursday, spend Friday and the weekend recovering, and be back to work on Monday.

On July 2, Margo drove me to Cedars-Sinai. She’s still a little pissed about what happened with Perdida last year, but we’ve been working through it (couples counseling), and I think this was a step in the right direction. She feels sorry for me and wants to take care of me, which I think is the foundation for rebuilding a solid relationship.

The pre-surgery process seemed a little awkward to me. A foreign nurse with a heavy accent processed me into Day Surgery, but I felt a little uncomfortable by her inability to correctly pronounce my name, my injury, or the word “crackers.” Did she have any idea what was going on? I was somewhat reassured by a balding, ponytailed man who drifted into my curtained-off bed chamber and announced in an airy, moderately disinterested voice that he’s my anesthesiologist and “Don’t worry, I’ve never lost a patient.” I started to feel anxious—thou doth protest too much, methinks.

They got me hooked up to an IV and started with a low-level relaxing agent. As I started to get light-headed, I began joking with Margo about the hilarity of my inevitable death on the operating table. Eventually, Dr. Hunzinbergel came in for a brief pep talk. He mentioned that they’d kick in such a powerful anesthetic that I wouldn’t even remember being wheeled to the operating room. I’ve had surgery before, so I laughed off such a ridiculous suggestion. The last thing I remember was talking to Margo. Then I woke up in the recovery area, with Dr. Hunzinbergel gleefully announcing that he had repaired the damage. I didn’t understand what he meant. Also, I feel back asleep.

When I awoke again, the full extent of his glee became evident. He put me in a full cast—made of tight-packed cotton and ace bandages—that I had to keep elevated all weekend, before I could meet with a physical therapist. The therapist unwrapped the bandages, removed the cotton, and examined the scars, which I myself saw for the first time. I wanted to puke, possibly from the massive amounts of Vicodin I had inhaled over the weekend, but I like to think it had more to do with the terrifying red-black lines crisscrossing my hand.

The therapist made a cheap cast out of some sort of plastic that becomes malleable in moderate heat (hence the warnings not to leave it in the car) but is rock hard at room temperature. She showed me how to clean and redress the wounds and showed me some basic finger-movement exercises to do each hour so the muscle didn’t atrophy. I wanted to die: such basic actions as making a “square fist” had turned into nearly-impossible Herculean efforts.

Back at home, Margo had gone off to Wilmington to shoot a few more episodes of Black Belt Irish. Her role as a Canadian arms dealer had grown suspiciously popular, so they made it recurring despite the fact that she had died in original one-off episode. Anyway, with her gone and the band pissed at me for causing so many delays and financial problems, I found myself alone to tend to my recovery. Trust me when I say nothing is more terrifying than having to hold gauze bandages in place with your teeth while using your only functional hand to tape a wrist that feels like it’s about to detach from the rest of the body.

I spent a three weeks alone, laid up in that cast, in an opiate stupor. I subsisted on junk food and sandwiches of rapidly turning egg salad. Finally, Margo returned, I got the cast removed, and I entered a six-week period of physical therapy. The therapy terrified me, because I had the suspicion that the cartilage “repair” was more like tacking frayed curtains to the wall than patching them, so I felt like any little move would cause the cartilage to re-tear.

I finished my last therapy session today, actually, and I don’t feel much better at all. I can do something with relative ease—typing for short periods of time, writing by hand, even playing a little guitar—but if I bend it the wrong way, it flares in immeasurable pain, far worse than what I suffered prior to the surgery. I’m told to continue the therapy exercises at home until I see Dr. Hunzinbergel for a follow-up in six weeks, on November 4. I hope things will be considerably better, but I have no way of knowing.

The short version of this long, disappointing tale is this: I am unable to continue work on Fuck Machines until I return to 100%. I don’t have a clue when that will happen, and Dr. Hunzinbergel refuses to give any sort of ballpark answer for fear of a lawsuit. I do feel like I’m edging ever closer to recovery, but I refused to allow Mildew to put yet another release date that may ultimately be changed.

For now, we’re simply saying, “Cumming in 2010 A.D.” Lucky for us, 2010 feels like a nice, sci-fi-ish year, so Mildew feels confident the marketing department will make the release year seem sexy.

We don’t want the Abysmal juggernaut to fade when we were just regaining some momentum, but with my inability to play, we have to be creative in how we promote the band. Look for some goodies to pop up soon, and before you know it, Fuck Machines will be penetrating your stereos.