MaineCourse

Vignettes

Rakkity

The Beeper
---------
When I landed on my wrist two Saturdays ago, the last thing on
my mind was the wristwatch on my wrist. But after the impact, and as I
staggered towards the back door, an image remains strong in my memory--
a free-standing white watch dial lay on the ground, its face disfigured by broken glass,
and the wrist band lay elsewhere, apparently broken away from the dial.
Several hours later, lying on a hospital gurney, I mentioned
the destroyed watch to Beth. She hated that watch because it beeped every hour on the
hour, and couldn't be stifled. Sometimes I would forget to take it off before going to
bed, and Beth would be woken up by a plaintive "Beep!". Not a loud beep, but enough
to wake Beth up (but not me) from a sound sleep. I'd be snoring away, and would wake
up just a little while Beth peeled the watch off my wrist to take it downstairs. So
when she heard that it was destroyed in my fall, she said, "Great! Glad to hear
something good happened today."

Seized
------
"Just hold your arm out here and I'll remove the splint", Dr. Pyfrom said while I sat
down on the examination bench.. My left arm
seemed heavier than usual, and as the Ace bandage was unrolled, it got heavier and
heavier. Finally the cut Dr. Pyfrom had made 14 days previously was revealed. I was
astounded and repelled
by the appearance of my arm, with all those staples jabbed through puffy, bloody flesh.
Now my arm felt like a lead poker, and I asked Beth for some support. Like the good
nurse that she is, she held her strong arms out under my weak one, while Dr. P. swabbed
the arm with alcohol, and said soothing words about how well it was healing. It may have been
healing, but suddenly I felt clammy all over. Then he said, "How about the right hand?",
as he started to slide a gentle finger down the slightly swollen back of my hand.
Then he hit a sore spot. The room went black. Dr. P. and Beth started calling to me as
I fell back against the wall. I must have been out for a second or two. After
the shock of seeing my left arm, getting some bad bones probed in the right arm pushed
me over the edge. Afterwards, Beth said to me, "it was just like an epileptic siezure. I
thought to myself, am I now going to have to live with an epileptic?"

Q and As
-------
Number 10: "Whoa! What'd you do to your wrist!", asked my summer intern, Rick, as I entered
the office. "Well, I was standing up high on a ladder in my back yard cutting off a big
limb with a chainsaw, blah, blah, blah... And when the branch broke, the tree kicked the
ladder forward, and I lost mt grip,... adboringinfinitum...Then apparently I landed on
top of my wrist, which bent into a z shape...etc, etc.

Number 20: "Hey, Ed, what happened to you arm?", a fellow astronomer, asks me in the hall.
"Well, I was on a ladder in my back yard cutting a tree limb with a chainsaw, and when
the branch broke, the tree kicked back. Then I landed on my wrist.

Number 30: "What happened to your hand?" asks the Starbucks barrista. "I fell off a
ladder while cutting a tree, and landed on my wrist."

Number 40: "How'd you hurt your hand?", asks the clerk at IKEA. "Fell off
a ladder."

Number 50: "What's with the cast?", asks some random person tomorrow. "Ladder."

The Radiologist
---------------
Beth and I walked into the radiology office with Dr. Pyfrom's order for X-rays of my
right hand. After a short time, I was called into the X-ray room and sat in the
only chair, right next to an enormous black table with a preying-mantis X-ray source
machine hovering over it. The radiologist came in, and asked, "What happened to
your wrist?" (See Q&A 25 above.) Without any comment, she grabbed my left wrist
and tried to turn my palm flat down on the table. I shouted, and simultaneously
stood up to allow my elbow to rotate the hand. You see, there are two pins in the
lower part of my wrist that prevent the normal rotation (that I will get back again),
like when you turn a doorknob. It's painful for me or any other external force to
try to rotate it, and if that wasn't the only thing, I would have felt my wrist bones
rubbing against each other. But she had failed to realize that I have only a half
cast, and the stapled region is protected only by gauze and an Ace bandage, so her grasp was
was right onto the staples. She may have apologized, but I didn't notice. After two
X-rays of the left hand, I said, "What about the right hand?" She looked at me funny,
and went out to check Dr. P's order form. She returned with a disgruntled look on her
face, and with no comment, X-rayed my right hand.
When Beth and I got the films a few minutes later, there were none of the left hand.
Darn. That would have been much more interesting.

The Return
----------
We were all sitting around the dining room table, and Katie came from the back yard
where she had been cleaning up the debris around the accident site. Something grey
dangled from her hand. "Look what I found", she said. It was the dreaded watch,
and not only did it appear to be intact, but it wasn't anything like the watch
of my imagination. Being digital, it had no face. Talk about false memories!
The watch didn't stay around long enough for us to find out if it beeped. Silently,
Beth consigned it to the deeps of the waste bin.

Rakkity! So many letters from a presumed one-finger typist! We thank you!

Alas, that painful trials like this generate opportunities for renewed pain for some time thereafter, as if the initial injury weren't pain enough ... I salute your brave cheerfulness!

As to the inevitable repetitive inquiries, you could print up business-sized cards with the blog's URL on it ... You certainly keep the readership well-informed!

Posted by fellow freefaller.

Rakkity (you have now truly earned this blog alias) this is a great post. From your watch recollection, to your passing out in the office, to the questions, to the obnoxious technician, to the throwing out of the damn beeping watch. This broken wrist thing is a real drag and you seem to be dealing with it with much needed humor and much needed Beth. Are the bad bones in the right hand related to your fall as well? Feel better.

Posted by chris.

I had the same thought...all those words and only one semi-functioning hand to type them with.

Number 60: What, no more mangled wrist stories?", asks your mild-manner keeper of the blog in October. "#@#$ !!

Posted by michael.

Oh, there'll be more. But not about wrists, I hope, in October. Can you lend me a portable wifi, and I'll give you real-time reports on how it is to go one-armed into the Wind River Mtns for a week? My hero, the one-armed explorer, John Wesley Powell, would say, Go for it.) In Oct., I expect to have a full-fledged Wind River story for you.

Posted by rakkity.

So much to respond to in your tale of gore and woe, rakkity, but mostly I laugh everytime I read the quote from Beth about having to live with an epileptic.

Posted by horrified and amused.

I wanted to say the same thing, even tried, but then I remembered when Diane said to me, "How am I going to live with someone who likes their pea soup hot?"

Posted by michael.

Posted by Michael at August 8, 2005 09:25 PM