WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT MURPHY'S LAW?

Murphy's Law ... can it ever be defeated?

In our case, it usually seems as if the answer is "NO." Bad things keep happening, despite often overwhelmingly positive odds for a positive outcome in the given situations.

2 Weeks ago, Father Monkey dislocated AND broke his elbow! Karate. Go figure! Bad luck indeed, for just a little more than year ago I seriously damaged my knee. You guessed it ... Karate was my culprit as well! It took nearly a year to set this mess semi-straight, including surgery, lots of physical therapy, and months and months in a brace. And still, my knee will never be trustworthy again! This karate business is getting expensive! And now, not very long after the completion of my therapy, Father Monkey sustains an injury. And what's more, it seems the news/prognosis for Father Monkey's elbow gets worse with each doctor visit!

Father Monkey has been through 3 visits thus far: emergency room the day of the injury, plus 2 Orthopedic doctor visits. The ER doctor put a splint on. He wasnt sure as to the exact damage, but didn't seem too worried. 3 Days later the first orthopedic visit went something like this: nurse removes splint and bandages; doctor walks in and introduces himself, briefly (hi, I'm Dr. X); he looks at emergency room xrays we had brought to the visit and the very next words out of his mouth were something like "oh this is bad, very bad!"; then he proceeds to examine the elbow, ask questions as to how injury happened, what had been done up to that point in terms of medical help, and expanded on his initial comments, although the theme remained constant; then new xrays were done; these looked somewhat less frightening to him, although there was a suspicious spot that he wanted to have a CT scan done on; the splint was not re-applied, but Father Monkey was told to continue with his sling; so we left the office in a holding pattern of sorts, with dr. orders for a scan; come back in a week, he said. Our initial optimism had slipped precipitously! Well it was more like 10 days, but finally today we got the CT scan results. This was the visit today: Dr. walks in, makes polite comment ... hello ... asks Father Monkey how the arm is doing, and for details of past week (pain level, movement ability and so on); he clips CT films onto light board and explains how the injury is much worse than he originally thought (note that originally he said it was BAD, VERY BAD!); furthermore, he says, Father Monkey's injury is a very unusual one (ooh ... bad bad bad to be unusual ... if you have to go to the dr. for whatever reason, you WANT the problem to be B-O-R-I-N-G!) and he's rarely seen one like it (this dr. is a hand/arm/elbow specialist!); and so on and so on ... bad stacked upon bad; finally, after new xrays, he gave Father Monkey a brace and told him to come back in a week (he plans on discussing the case with a colleague); so once again we left the office with an even worse picture, almost no optimism at all, and still in a holding pattern! Surgery seems likely, but its not an absolute. And full recovery ... hmmm!

I spoke about Murphy's Law in a previous blog ... about how we seem to be the victims thereof all too frequently ... if there is bad luck to be found, its on our doorstep in an instant ... or so it seems! Persecution complex? Maybe ... but true none-the-less! Many times in our marriage we have beat the odds ... and not in a positive sense! If something comes up wherein we should have a positive outcome, but there is, say, a 1-5% chance of negative outcome ... you guessed it ... we most frequently receive the negative outcome! Sigh!!

HOWEVER ... the writing of this blog gives me a tiny boost ... it has just occurred to me that while we are once again battling overwhelming odds, this time the overwhelming odds favor a negative outcome, and the very slight chances offer positive outcome ... so ... HERE'S HOPING WE CONTINUE OUR TREND OF BEATING THE ODDS! Maybe we will indeed trample Murphy's Law this time!