Woke up on Saturday morning and my right wrist felt sore on the lateral side (the side where the pinky finger is) and thought perhaps I slept on it wrong. I usually sleep with my arms above my head, curled up in between the pillows, so I was thinking it was in an odd position for most of the night and it would go away. That day, we had baseball registration and so I spent 4 hours writing names of players on a list and then went home and inked a couple strips. I noticed that as the night progressed, my wrist got more and more sore, and weaker (I could barely pick anything up with my right hand and couldn’t even open a sliding glass door with it)…YIKES! I thought to myself, it’s my right hand…my RIGHT hand! If you haven’t guessed by now, I am right handed, so yes, this was quite a “rut-roh” moment for me. I looked at the spot on my wrist and noticed it was swollen so I slipped on a brace I have and went to sleep with it on.

The next morning, I took the brace off to shower and the wrist felt better. Swelling was down some and the pain was more of a slight ache. Strength was almost back to normal, but not quite there. But, we still had another day of baseball registration to go through, fortunately only 3 hours that day…but I still had two strips to ink! GASP! I tried to write with the brace on, but it was like trying to write while having a cinder block on my hand…wasn’t working. Came home, worried about my self-imposed deadline, but decided to take the rest of the day off…didn’t want to press my luck. Again, I slept with the brace on…just in case.

This morning, woke up, looked down at my hand and OH MY FREAKING JEBUS!…The hand was GONE!….lol…just kidding….when I took the brace off, it still had an ache to it but it was much better. Strength was at 85% and mobility near normal. I inked the two strips and colored them, lettering one and leaving the lettering for Friday’s for tomorrow….didn’t want to press my luck. At least, I will have this week’s strips done with a few days in advance. Makes me want to get a buffer back up to more than a few days or a week. Trouble with that is, since I am writing for a weekly or daily gag strip now with the crew being back on Earth for the time being, I am not writing that far ahead, thus, my buffer usually stays at a week or less. With this recent scare, I thought, too, I better not overwork my sore wrist, whatever is going on, carpel tunnel, sprain, repetitive task syndrome, overwork of a pumpkin carving accident on my 19th birthday…

Rewind 25 years ago, I’m on my front porch, carving a pumpkin, hand slips down the blade of the knife and whoosh, I cut through two fingers on my right hand (ring finger and pinky), requiring reconstructive surgery. Through the healing and rehab, I start practicing writing and drawing with my left hand. I started to get better at it just as the rehab ended and went back to using only my right hand. This weekend made me think that perhaps I should start practicing again with my left hand, yanno’…just in case…never hurts to be ambidextrous.