I went yesterday to the Wound Healing Center to have the big gouge on my right leg looked at. I was loaded into the facility's van at about 7:20 and whisked off to my appointment. No peregrine this time but beautiful pre-sunrise skies with pink clouds. And the waiting room featured a panoramic view-- construction up close but then trees, slowly being gilded by the rising sun and mountains in the distance that went from dark masses to shapes where every cove and ridgelet was defined.
In the exam room they did some tedious measurements and left me to await the doctor. I was stretched on a table by another panoramic window and as the sun washed over me, I could almost imagine I was at a spa. The doctor arrived and tinkered with the wound, tidying up this and that, and told me that he proposed to put me in a pressure bandage to speed the healing. It will stay put till I go back next Monday for him to take another look. This whole experience of being more or less helpless and dependent is at once annoying and humbling. But it swung into sharp perspective when one of the nurses, asking how the accident happened, nodded, unimpressed. "We see lots of accidents caused by a vehicle rolling on a slope. One poor lady got her hand caught in the door and it was completely de-gloved." She wasn't talking about a glove either. Counting my blessings . . .
