The story of my most serious injury:
About 10 years ago, I tripped over a weird spot in a sidewalk and broke my right leg in a couple of places. I was at a homeschool park day. Everybody crowded around me and some people wanted to call an ambulance. I remember I just kept saying, “No ambulance, please.” I was in a lot of pain, but not so much that I couldn’t also be painfully embarrassed. My friend, Jocelyn, got me into her car and, along with another friend, Chris, we got me to my medical clinic. Then we sat for what seemed like hours, waiting for someone to do something. Chris got fed up and started telling them to at least get me some ice and some ibuprofen or tylenol. Neither happened. Finally they x-rayed it and then, again, I sat and sat. At one point someone came and stood in the doorway and tossed an ace bandage into the room and said, “Here, you can wrap it up with this.” Chris wrapped it up for me.
Time went on and finally someone came and said, “Yeah, it is a spiral fracture and you need to see an orthopedist.” Unfortunately, the orthopedist had just left the building to go to lunch and then to a different office, 15 miles away.
So, we jumped back in the car (ha ha – like I was doing anything like jumping), and Jocelyn drove me to the other medical building where we, you guessed it, waited and waited.
Finally, late in the afternoon, I had a cast put on and was sent home. It took several months to heal and it was almost a year before I felt confident in fulling using my leg.
Other injuries?
Before this incident, I had broken a bone in my foot. I did that stepping out of an elevator that hadn’t lined up quite right with the floor. I had a cast on that and was on crutches for about 8 weeks. Roya was a 1 and 1/2-year-old then and was scared of the crutches.
And, yes, I broke my other ankle another time when I was jogging in the park and stepped off the path right into a sprinkler hole. Lucky for me there were four fire fighters jogging the same path and they got me back to my car. I drop the block to my doctor’s office and called them from my car. They brought an office chair on wheels down to get me. Another cast. More crutches.
And, just a few months ago, I tripped over a curb, getting out of the car, and broke my right elbow and a couple of ribs. I’m JUST getting over the broken ribs (the arm has been better for a while).
So – those are my injuries – that’s it. I never broke a bone until I was in my mid-30’s.
I’ve had bone density tests and they were always fine until this last month when it showed borderline osteoporosis. So now I’m on medication for that. I always thought it was preventable, and not reversible, but turns out that’s not true, and the medication I’m taking will probably make my bones actually stronger.
The only other injury I ever had was when I was 10 and I went home from school at lunch time when nobody else was there. I used a sharp knife to cut some roast beef to make a sandwich and sliced off a piece of my pointer finger. There was a lot of blood and it scared me. I ran out of the house and up to some construction workers across the street. They helped me stop the bleeding and washed it and put some tape on it. Then I walked back to school. I was late and told the teacher what had happened and she sent me to the school nurse. The nurse called me mom. Luckily, my mom hadn’t gotten home yet or she’d have discovered the knife dropped onto the kitchen floor with blood splattered about. Would’ve scared her, I bet.
When I was a kid I kind of envied other kids who got bad injuries or things like emergency appendectomies. Looking back, I supposed I envied them the attention they received due to their injury. It seemed exciting, too, like something was at least happening to them.
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