Fractures and Farewell

By Thomas Feng

July 31^st, 2019

Dear July,

I am writing from the East Wing of the Royal Melbourne Hospital tonight because of a fractured wrist, which I had been carelessly ignoring for a few weeks.

I was diagnosed last Wednesday, went in for scans on Thursday, and then recommended by the hospital's orthopedic specialist to have surgery on Monday. Yesterday afternoon in the middle of an important campaign I received a call saying the surgery would be the next day at 9.30am but to arrive early at 7am, and arrived to find that my operation would be moved forward to happen immediately.

I lay still on the trolley with my elbows tucked in as I was shuffled through a labyrinth of rooms in different departments as I met a sea of new faces telling me what they were about to do to me.

Before surgery began, I witnessed a nurse use a mini chainsaw to remove my cast in a suspenseful thriller-movie manner where nothing goes wrong. The anaestheticist inserted the needle on my right hand and reassured me everything would be fine while simultaneously explaining everything that could go wrong.

After breathing into the oxygen mask, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I woke up in the recovery ward with a screw in my wrist and a sore hip from the piece of bone they had removed. All of this because I didn't realise I had a severe fracture.

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Fracture, a medical term for a broken bone stemming from a latin word frangere which means to break. I wonder how the human race fractured itself from Latin.

Fracture. Also used colloquailly as a term for fragment or split within an organisation or group.

I have fractured myself from these letters to you July.

I wanted a month of radical honesty, experimentation, power, empathy and storytelling but life had other ideas for me.

Instead I needed to rest and recover in my non-writing burrow reading, resting, cooking and watching terrible memes on the internet (and tiny house videos).

And so July, this is my abrupt farewell to you for now until next year.

Thanks for always being your turbulent self.

You teach me every year (usually through difficult circumstances) that the best way to deal with discomfort is to accept it, live with it, express it and persevere through.

July, you are a rolling train in a dark tunnel, and it is only when you leave and I am out, that I realise how lucky I am.

With love until next year,

Thomas

P.S. Hello reader! How was your July? I hope you survived. I'd love to hear from you. This wasn't the series I thought it would be, but thank you for persevering with my 2019 letters to July series (check out previous letters to July). Your enduring support, kindness and readership means the world to me.