My physical therapy orders indicated I had a Colles fracture.  

So I Googled it. 

Fracture of the wrist, usually from falling on an outstretched hand. 

You don’t say. 

Colles fractures, my Google search said, can take three months to a year to heal. 

Um, what? 

Three months? To a year? 

Each website I clicked through made the same prediction. 

They also said Colles fractures were common in little old ladies. 

I’m happy to show those websites where they can stuff themselves. 

I refuse to deal with this fracture for three months, let alone a year. 

As I was scheduling the surgery to repair the fracture, I asked how long I’d be out of commission from said surgery. 

“Two weeks,” the staff said. 

Two weeks. Two weeks?  

I’m sorry. Am I having a lobotomy? Amputation? This surgery — so minor it didn’t even require general anesthesia — would lay me up for two weeks? 

“No,” I said to the staff. 

“No?” they said. 

“No,” I said. “I’ll make you a deal. Thanksgiving is next week. I don’t have anything scheduled after Monday. How about I rest this weekend, get back to things on Monday, then take it easy over the rest of Thanksgiving week?” 

They said they would ask my surgeon. 

“No,” I said. “Tell him that’s what I’m doing.” 

Because really. It’s a plate. Getting screwed into a single fracture. Fourteen days to recover felt a bit indulgent.  

The staff responded that my surgeon said I was fine to resume normal activities the Monday after my Thursday surgery, if I felt up to it. 

“He also said you’re going to do well.” 

My friends. We are on the Apollo 13 with an explosion threatening our lives. Failure is not an option. I guarantee I will feel up to handling my life by Monday. 

And when the interwebs suggested total recovery was a minimum of three months away, it became a contest. 

A contest I was determined to win. 

A contest against whom, I couldn’t say. And I don’t know what the purse is.  

But I will win. 

During my first follow-up appointment after my surgery, the surgical team told me I couldn’t lift more than five pounds until I was two months out from surgery. 

I said I wouldn’t. 

Anymore. 

I also lied. 

Because two months takes me square to the end of January.  

How was I supposed to go through December and January without lifting five pounds? Which also meant, by the way, refraining from applying five pounds of pressure.  

No heavy doors. No down dog. No walking the dog. No pulling the bedspread up to make the bed. No, no, no. 

My world was full of no. 

But I had Christmas decorations to put up. Christmas decorations to take down. Bottles of wine to pour. Willie’s walker to lift. Baskets of laundry to carry. Pots to put away. 

So I adjusted my weight restriction. Ten pounds, instead of five.  

I started physical therapy a week and a half before Christmas. I was provided exercises to do at home. 

Three times a day, I was told. 

Which is exactly how often I did them. 

My physical therapy team tried to schedule me for sessions over the Christmas break. 

I demurred. My children were home from school.  

“You don’t know me,” I told my physical therapy team. “But I will do those exercises. And I will come back in January stronger.” 

Yes. Of course I did. 

By the time 2026 rolled around, my range of motion was nearly back to normal. I just had to work on my strength. 

“I know you’re lifting more than five pounds,” my physical therapist said. “How much are you lifting?” 

So I told her. Told her that I was lifting weights and holding planks and that I put away all the Christmas decorations by myself. 

Not because I had to.  

Because I made myself.  

I may be in a contest against no one, but I will not let no one win. I will astound my surgical team, get written up as a case study. Victims of Colles fractures will follow my blueprint to quicker healing for all eternity. I will get discharged from physical therapy before the three-month mark. 

And when I do, my physical therapy team will watch me leave, shaking their heads in disbelief. They’ll remember my grit. My determination. They’ll remark that they never saw anyone recover so quickly. 

Except. 

I live with two strapping guys — my husband and his blonde doppelgänger — who screw the lid on the jar of peanut butter to within an inch of its life. 

I don’t know who, in their past lives, stole their peanut butter. But the two of them are determined the peanut butter thievery ends here and now. 

Despite my planks and boxes of Christmas decorations perfectly Tetris-ed in their storage and my 27-pound dog pulling on the leash tethered to my bad hand — I have not recovered enough strength to get the stupid lid off the stupid peanut butter for my stupid smoothie. 

I am the crew of Apollo 13, discovering the filters for their ship are shaped differently than the filter receptacles in their lunar module.  

OK. Yes. I’m being dramatic. But I want to be better. I want to be healed. I want to win. 

And I want some dang peanut butter.