rakkity

Last Saturday, I had a disastrous 6-game racquetball match with Dominic (5-1 Dom). And I really want a return match, but it will be a while before I can have a chance to get back at him. You see, I have an arm problem.

After the games, I drove home tiredly to continue where I had left off my on-going hacking at the 40-foot weeds in our back yard. One of these “weeds” is a big pine tree with a long branch that used to overhang our kitchen window and back door, and I had long wanted to get rid of that lousy branch. So I pushed up my 20-ft ladder against the inner part of the branch and climbed up 8 or 10 feet, chain saw in hand, and started sawing through. No problems. I figured this would be my last cut of the morning, and I’d go have lunch. The branch cut off smoothly, fell away, and then there was an abrupt upswing of the inner part of the branch, the ladder fell forward, and I fell backward.

There were two mistakes on my part here — 1) I had no one spotting me (Beth was out shopping) and 2) I should have put the ladder against something more solid than the branch. Oh well, “should haves” don’t count in the real world.

I landed on my butt, and felt a sharp pain in my left wrist. I stood up and looked down at my arm, and shouted, “I just broke my wrist!” (Those of you who hate gory details can skip to the next paragraph. Mike can continue reading.) My left arm hung down straight, but it took a sudden shift sideways just above my hand. “Now that’s serious”, I said to myself. There was blood dripping from somewhere, but I couldn’t see from where. “It must be a compound fracture, with a bone sticking out underneath”, but I didn’t want to
look. I staggered to the back door and punched 9-1-1 into the phone. Sitting on the kitchen chair, I heard the 911 guy answer, and noticed that I was dripping blood onto our nice hardwood floor.

Apparently I was still in shock, because the pain hadn’t reached my brain yet. Weakly, I gasped, “I’ve broken my wrist” into the receiver. The emergency man was very professional, getting my name and address, asking whether the paramedics should come to the front door or the back. He had me stay on the line, and assured me that an ambulance was on its way. The pain was now increasing, and I must have been panting, because the 911 man told me to breathe slowly, and keep my head down.

In less than 10 minutes, there was some activity outside. Just as a paramedic came up the front lawn, Beth also came inside, not yet seeing my jagged wrist. She said, “An ambulance seems to have come to one of our neighbors…” Simultaneously, she noticed my wrist, the blood, the disarray, and the paramedic coming through the front door.

A few minutes later I was being rolled out to the ambulance. The paramedics were taking no chances on my back, and had tied me down and immobilized against a hard plastic ribbed board. Beth asked if she could come along, but they told her to follow separately. So, for the first time I saw the inside of an ambulance, The paramedic who rode in the back with me was pleasant and professional. I told him the last time I had been in in Prince Georges Hospital was in 1984 when my daughter Katie had been born–a more joyous occasion, and certainly not at the trauma center.

Inside, after the emergency docs had had a good look at the trauma, I finally got some pain meds. Lots of repeated questions–name, address, age, all requested by at least 5 different people. One doc did some subtraction after I told my age and date of birth, and said, “You’re one year older than that, aren’t you?” Maybe he was testing my mental capacity, which, admittedly, was only at the 20-30% level, but I pointed out that my birthday was yet to come this year, and, “I never count my birthdays in advance.”

Somewhere, long before surgery, one of the docs had re-aligned my wrist bones, so they were now in a straight line. I never even noticed! The surgeon looked at it and remarked, “Someone must have re-aligned your wrist.” (Don’t these guys talk to each other?)

After X-rays, the trauma surgeon told me (and Beth, who, thankfully had arrived) that it was a bad break, and he’d have to use a Titanium plate, and screw some of the bones together. Beth followed me and my gurney through the corridors to the surgery room, where she kissed me goodbye. A few breaths later, I was in dreamland.

I woke up in the recovery room, and was re-assured that the surgery had gone smoothly. Beth helped push my gurney up to my room, which was shared by someone with much worse problems. There was loud moaning and groaning from behind the curtains. At one point while Beth and I were talking quietly, the guy behind the curtains started a telephone conversation. We overheard something like, “…the guy shot me in the elbow, and shattered my forearm”. Beth and I looked at each other. “I guess that puts things into some kind of perspective, doesn’t it”, I thought.

After an uncomfortable night, and an unpleasant breakfast, Beth came in and used her considerable skills to get all the forms signed by appropriate doctors and speed up my departure. (Thank you again, Beth!) I wished my roommate a speedy recovery, and headed out the exit.

Now I’m home, coping with one-handed buttoning, one-handed bottle opening, and the hardest thing of all–one-handed shoe tying. Next Monday a local doctor will have a look at the wrist, and send me to a physical therapist. Maybe I should dig out those many Mark Jenkins stories from old Outside magazines, and recall some of his pointers on how to handle physical therapy and recovery from broken bones. Or I could go back to the hospital and compare notes with my roommate with the bullet-shattered arm. No, I don’t think so.