What doesn’t kill you— I don’t know if it makes you stronger or not. Maybe it’s enough that it doesn’t kill you.

After spending the day feeling as if I’d had a major setback, with the worst pain I’ve had in my arm in maybe a week, I wasn’t even sure I could wait one more week for my appointment. And I don’t even know what I did to myself to get it started.

I do know how I made it worse, though. I used it too much, including the time I absent-mindedly pushed the pump on the salad spinner with my right hand and felt it all the way to my elbow. And last night I changed the sheets on my bed, because I couldn’t wait any longer, but I managed to tweak both wrists and my back in the process. So I’m not totally blameless, but I don’t think I deserved such a bad day.

So obviously, I had no intention of making it worse tonight by doing anything stupid. Anything else stupid. And then I did.

Well, maybe it wasn’t so stupid after all. I had just iced down the right arm, and I put on the brace before pulling the weed trimmer off the garage wall and turning it on. I know. I shouldn’t have done it, but I just couldn’t stand to see the weeds covering my walkway, much less walk through them back and forth at least once every day.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t that bad because for about an hour after my twenty minutes or so in the garden, I couldn’t feel anything. Both arms were totally numb, all the way to the shoulder. It was the best I’ve felt all month, except for the part where I didn’t have any feeling. Plus, I had the satisfaction of knowing that my water guy won’t have to bring a machete when he makes his delivery tomorrow morning.

I just had to do it. And even after the numbness wore off, I didn’t feel any worse than I had all day. It still hurt, but it wasn’t a setback. At least, it wasn’t any more of a setback than I’d been experiencing since I woke up this morning. And it didn’t kill me, so I must be stronger. Or at least alive.