Scratching an Itch

I had propped a round-runged ladder against a wooden basketball post in order to reach some long-hanging branches which hung over my driveway. As winter gave way to spring each year, I had contended with a myriad of oak leaves, and one day, a few years ago, it seemed good to me to remedy the situation. And with hand saw in hand I proceeded to climb the ladder. Well, my readers, if I took away any lesson from that experience it is, 

“Never prop a round-runged ladder against a circular post, (and expect to navigate it successfully).”

And as you may have already inferred, the ladder began to shift, and 

… I fell

onto solid concrete, and

… shattered my ankle

which resulted in a consultation with an orthopedic surgeon, and which ultimately required a complicated surgical procedure, and the installation of a mid-calf to ankle cast.

And as with the majority of people who are forced to wear a cast on the leg or arm, the best that can be said about it is, “I tolerated it.”

Funny, how with any new season in life one learns the “tricks of the trade.” 

I discovered it was almost impossible to sleep in my bed at night for lack of any position which was compatible with the cast. Thus, I resorted to my easy chair, and while I was unable to sleep very long at a stretch, the footrest made it possible to position my ankle higher than the rest of me.

I also discovered that the presence of a cast makes it all but impossible to scratch an itch. But they say, “where’s there’s a will, there’s a way,” and I found a way to scratch some of the most accessible itches inside the cast. 

A butter knife.

There’s a line from an old Alka-Seltzer commercial which went something like,

… “Ohhh, what a relief it is.”

Well, it was.

I slipped that butter knife down along the inside of my cast, and scratched those minor itches which cropped up several times a day. And the coldness of the metal, even in the warmest weather, was nothing short of wonderful.

However, part way through my tenure with this artificial addition to my anatomy, I experienced an itch, for lack of a more suitable word, which refused to be scratched. 

For you see, I found it impossible to reach it with any tool designed for a more primary purpose.

This was a sensation unlike any I had experienced during the course of my “plaster adornment.” As much irritation as itch. However it might be described, the thought of contending with the thing a moment more, well, it was simply unthinkable.

As a result, I asked my wife to contact the physician, and request an immediate appointment to have the cast replaced. Having explained my predicament, the receptionist encouraged us to come in immediately, and we (immediately) hopped in the car and drove an hour to the doctor’s office.

Well, needless to say once the cast was off, and I was afforded the momentary pleasure of scratching the offending measure of skin, it was “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

Thankfully, after the technician installed 18 inches of the same substance which he’d just removed, and I went away from there, I managed to avoid any repeat of the earlier sensation, until I was fortunate enough to have the cast permanently removed a few weeks later.

It occurs to me that life can be a lot like wearing a rather uncomfortable cast, which is necessary to one’s overall state of health and happiness, but which in the scheme of things can be a bit intolerable.

And not unlike the condition with which I was once given to deal, there are those seasons in which we encounter “a scratch which refuses to be itched,” and which is anything but tolerable. 

And so much like the artificiality of wearing a cast, and ultimately having it permanently removed, scripture alludes to “seeing through a glass darkly, but then face to face.”

Life can be an excruciatingly frustrating and fragile thing with which we have to do and deal, and “the riches in darkness and treasures in secret places” often beg to be found out. 

Thank God the redeemed have been granted the ultimate wherewithal to divest themselves of the temporal, in favor of the eternal, when we shall put off this cloak of fragility in favor of immortality, and when we will experience the ecstasy of  scratching an itch; which ‘til now has been left unscratched.

By William McDonald, PhD. (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol. 30. Copyright pending

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