At my appointment at the fracture clinic this morning, I expected to leave the hospital with a new cast on my right arm, but instead I managed to receive a removable splint, with the proviso that I take extra care with my wrist. I can take the splint off when I take a shower, do the dishes or give the kids a bath, which will be extremely helpful while R is away in Uganda for two weeks.

Two weeks ago, I would have been disappointed to learn that I had a hairline fracture on my radius bone. While having a broken wrist still sucks, I’ve spent the last 10 days thinking that I’d fractured my scaphoid bone, which would have required many weeks in a cast and taken months to heal properly (if at all), so receiving this information about my distal radius fracture almost seemed like good news.

It’s interesting how negative information can come across positively when I’m expecting a worse outcome. Generally the opposite happens, as I’m conditioned culturally to expect things to work out fine for me in the end. Perhaps this is why some people who are wealthy (ie most of the western world) can feel unhappy and discouraged when we have such easy access to many resources and opportunities. When we expect everything to work out to our benefit (and often to extremes that are unrealistic), we are likely to be disappointed.