My sinister life

Sinister is a word that means "giving the impression that something harmful or evil is happening or will happen". It is based on the Latin word for "left" (sinister). 

In the past, the right hand was considered the right hand to write with. Left-handed people were described as 'cack-handed'. The opposite is 'dexter' - from which we get 'dexterity' meaning "skill using the hands".

Anyway, why is my life 'sinister' right now? Because it seems that the left-hand side of the body is breaking up.

Three summers ago, I came back from holiday and rammed my elbow into the thin end of a door handle and since then, my shoulder has given me pain and still does. Two days later, I banged my left arm into the same door handle, making a big dent about 5 cm above the wrist. The index finger is still slightly number, but it's nothing like as bad as it was in the summer of 2020.

Recently, I overused my left thumb when typing on the computer, which means my left thumb now clicks - very painfully, too.

And then even more recently, I slipped on the cotton mat in the bathroom. My feet went skywards and my body was parallel to the ground. As I came down, two parallel lines of thought went through my mind: "This must look like something from a slapstick film. Oh, God, I'm going to come down. What's going to hit the floor. Please, not my head. I'm too young to die like this. Who's going to find my body?"

And as I came down, the left-hand side of my body hit the side wall of the bath. And then I tilted towards the right and landed on my right buttock. Strangely enough, I had no pain there. And even more weirdly, I had very little bruising on the left-hand side of my body. In fact, the only bit of bruising I could find was high up on my ribcage, just where the bra strap runs round the body to the back: it was as though someone had laid three sooty fingers on my body. The ribs were black - but not the space between them. That side of the body was swollen, though. 

Sneezing, coughing and laughing were very painful, but, thankfully, things did go the way Dr Google said it would. The information online said it would take two to four weeks to clear up and that's what happened. 

Now if only my shoulder, index finger and thumb would clear up so fast. It's a good thing that I'm very right-handed.

P.S. I forgot to mention that there are days when I wake up to toothache in the monstrous wisdom tooth on the left-hand side of my mouth. It's so huge that it towers over the rest, like Goliath over a crowd of Davids.