Driving with a Broken Wrist

Over the next few days, I will write about the Create in Me retreat. It's the first one we have had since 2019, and it was different:  a bit more low key, a more relaxed pace, but a great retreat. Today, let me write a bit about the trip in the car.

When I left, I thought I just had a sprained wrist. The drive up wasn't too bad, although for about the first hour I wondered if I was making a mistake. I had a soft brace on my hand and wrist, So I could still move my fingers. I couldn't clench the steering wheel, but my right hand could help with the steering and holding steady.

While I was away, I had my wrist splinted, so my right arm was bent, and I had less use of my fingers. I knew the trip back would be different. I had always planned to go back to Columbia to spend some time with a grad school friend on Sunday. I decided to make that trip, and if it turned out to be impossible, I would call my spouse and strategize.

It was not as easy as the trip up the mountain, but I thought that I could probably make the trip back to South Florida. I didn't want my spouse to have to fly up and drive the car back, and I didn't want to fly down and have to go back and get the car at some other point. So yesterday morning, off I went.

I was surprised at the amount of traffic:  lots of traffic between Columbia and Orangeburg and then again, for the first two hours after the Florida line. Happily, those times of heavy traffic were interspersed with times of less traffic. In the heavy traffic I kept my left arm tense and my attention super focused, and it was exhausting.

I finished the trip in South Florida with heavy rush hour traffic, even though it was only three o'clock--sigh. But in a way that was good; as the traffic slowed to 30 and 40 miles an hour, it meant that I didn't have the big trucks trundling by along with the cars that zip in and out of slower traffic. In short, it was easier to keep control of the car.

I got home looking like a drowned river rat. All that intense driving left me sweaty. But I did it! I don't recommend it. At one point during my odyssey last week, I thought about how I had said I needed to start working on my arms, but this is not the upper body workout I had in mind.

Would I do it again? If it meant I got to go on a wonderful retreat, yes I probably would. But hopefully, in the future, I won't have to make these kinds of choices.