• Part I: The Night of the Attack
• Part II: The Day After
• Part III: Taking Care of Business
• Part IV: Falling Apart

The ten days between my visit to the orthopedic department at Highland Hospital and the surgery went fast during the day and slow at night. Every day I got a new medical bill in the mail. My one mile ride with paramedics to Kaiser ER cost $3,000. I got on the phone with various government agencies, wrote letters, and met with a financial assistance rep at Highland Hospital to get medical insurance. I didn’t know if any of my efforts would pay off, no one gave me any guarantees. As the stack of bills grew on my kitchen table, so did my anxiety. 

When I wasn’t dealing with insurance, I was applying for jobs and working on a couple of writing projects as part of my interview process. The job search became a welcome distraction from thinking about my broken finger and the surgery. 

If before the incident I looked for a job that would fulfill my career goals and creative aspirations, after the incident I focused on practical things, like benefits, medical insurance, and location. On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I was back to basics. Physical safety and financial security became my two main goals. I became obsessed with safety and couldn’t tolerate anyone or anything that made me feel uncomfortable or unsafe in a public space. I searched for “the safest cities in the world” with “the best healthcare” on Google and came across Japan and Switzerland. For a brief moment, I wanted to be back in Switzerland, where I lived for a year after college, advocating for human rights at the United Nations. As a recent college grad in my early twenties, I found Geneva boring. Years later, mugged and left with a broken finger in Oakland, boring sounded pretty good.

While I didn’t have to bring up my upcoming surgery during the phone interviews, I couldn’t avoid it during in-person meetings. It was fun to watch people stop halfway as they reached for a handshake only to find my right hand in a giant splint. After a quick pause, more creative people extended their left hand and looked pleased with themselves for finding a solution. Sometimes people asked what had happened and I told them I broke a finger. And then they asked how I broke it. When they didn’t ask, I didn’t volunteer to tell the story.

I tried to walk everywhere I had to go, since I couldn’t play tennis or do any other type of exercise. I couldn’t run, because running made my blood rush faster, making my hand in splint feel uncomfortably warm and throbbing. But I needed to move, otherwise all my energy would turn inward and create more anxiety. So I walked, but only in the daylight and only in places I felt safe — mostly in San Francisco, avoiding Lake Merritt. Luckily, the weather was warm and dry, and I could wear shirts and light jackets with sleeves soft enough for me to squeeze through my splint.

I allowed more time for simple activities, like making coffee in the morning, putting on makeup, or cleaning my apartment. I felt proud of myself after I dyed my hair and did laundry with just one hand. I learned to write with my left hand, since that was easier than trying to get Siri to understand my speech. 

Strangely, I began to feel more like myself than I had felt in months prior to the incident. I stopped questioning everything — I got stuff done and that gave me confidence. Maybe hitting the rock bottom gave me courage to pursue career opportunities I wouldn’t have otherwise. Maybe taking risks felt less risky than keeping the status quo. 

While my days were filled with meetings and phone calls, including regular check-ins from friends, my nights were lonely and quiet. That’s when I became more aware of my hand in a splint, feeling my entire world slashed in half. Sometimes I felt crowded and wanted to tear away the splint to breathe. As I lay in bed, I thought of all the things that could go wrong. What if an earthquake happens during my surgery? What if they have another emergency and have to postpone my surgery and my finger starts to heal the wrong way? What if my finger is dying and rotting? I then smelled my hand to make sure it wasn’t. I also checked the color of the tip of my finger — it looked healthy pink and I could feel it when I touched it. What if they can’t connect the bones and have to chop off my finger? Is my splint too tight? Is there enough blood flowing to my finger? What if it’s going to be crooked for life? 

After sufficiently exhausting myself, I fell asleep, with my right hand propped up on a pillow above my head, against the wall. 

To be continued…