Funny thing happened during my first year of law school. I developed a little bump on my left wrist about this time of year-while I was preparing for my first round of exams. It was not painful and I attributed it to the keyboard on my ibook (on which I could type fast-as-lightening) and the queen-sized blanket I had knitted the previous spring (which in and of itself prompted an epiphany that I probably could be doing something more productive with my time than knitting-like get a doctorate).
My bump accompanied me through my first, second and third year of law school, and into the final and fourth year. And as it wasn't painful, and it didn't interfere with any of my range of motion or any activities, I decided to wait until after the bar exam (July 2006) to deal with it. You see night-program law school while working full time leaves very little time to keep up with the momentum of one's existence.
People told me it was an accumulation of calcium, or it was a ganglion cyst, and that there was nothing to worry about unless it started to hurt. And so I didn't worry. And besides, it sort of kept me company in my "suffering' through law school. I could bend my hand and the bump would jut out-a shy, but ever present reminder that I had not escaped law school unscathed.
Until this morning. I awoke at my usual time of 5 a.m. and, for some reason, failed to turn on any lights before walking towards the kitchen to start the coffee. And I tripped. I tripped over some things I left on the floor of the living room before I went to bed last night. I was able to maintain some balance and slow my fall, but alas, there was no escaping the inevitable, I was going down. Gravity is so predictable.
Remarkably, I was basically uninjured, in any way. I came to my final resting place with my chin landing relatively softly on the carpet. I was already muttering "that was close" before I climbed back up to my former dignity and tried to save face in front of my dog. I expect a couple of bruises on my shins, where I banged them on the way down.
About an hour after the fall, while I sat at the kitchen table studying defenses to equitable remedies, I instinctively bent my wrist to acknowledge my partner in crime, and IT WAS GONE! I must have banged that exact part of my wrist on something when I fell-and ruptured the cyst. My wrist is a little tender, but only when I bent it backwards (as my friend said, "then don't do that"). I checked in with a nurse friend who assured me that so long as my movement was relatively normal, there was no tingling, numbness or coldness, that there was no need to seek medical attention. She told me that these things used to be called bible cysts because people banged bibles on them to rupture them. And finally she told me that this type of thing does not warrant postponing my Remedies exam on Tuesday. (Yeah, it's true, I was considering getting a doctor's note...)
But now, after three years with my little friend, it's gone, and I think I miss it. And for all of you that wake up one day and decide to go to law school....all the other typical warnings notwithstanding, befriending symptoms of repetitive strain injury is just one of the milder manifestations of craziness that law school produces. And writing stories about it as a study avoidance technique is another.
Shoshana