I thought an update might be warranted since I left in such a hurry yesterday.   I’ll make it short and sweet.  My leg was broken and the knee was badly bruised but oddly enough I had very little pain with either injury.  My better-half arrived in short order and whisked me away to the local Emergency Room.

I was then lucky enough to spend a great part of my day sitting on my ass in the Emergency Room.  First I got to chat with a fortyish women at the main desk who must have had her personality removed surgically.  It was like trying to talk to my computer.  When she was finished annoying me I was wheeled down the hall about ten feet to a waiting room where I sat for twenty minutes. A rather large but friendly woman whose job it was to obtain all of my personal information then took twenty minutes doing it.  That’s just the hospital’s routine of getting all of my insurance information and anything else that may help them avoid a lawsuit down the road.  With my leg still sticking up in the air I was jockeyed around the corner, thirty feet away, for another fifteen minutes where I was soon discovered by their computer geek who entered all of my data into their computer system and then filled my pockets with a huge pile of  forms that further explained the hospitals privacy laws to me.  Ho Effing Hum!

An hour and a half has now passed and I have yet to see or smell a doctor.  I’m taken to an freezing cold examination room where I sat for another half hour and still no doctor.  A young lady who looked twenty but sounded thirteen pushed me and my new best friend, the wheelchair, down the hall to x-ray.  I was back in twenty minutes and told to wait for the doctor to arrive to explain things to me.

I become bored at that point and started nosing around their little room.  As a payback for their insensitivity in leaving me sitting forever I managed to stand long enough to steal a dozen sets of really nice latex gloves from a dispenser on the wall.  The next time I’m slicing and dicing hot peppers I can use those gloves and just grin a little.

Fifteen minutes later the doctor walks into the room, introduces himself, and states emphatically “it’s broken”.  He drops another handful of forms on the table explaining how to use my new crutches.  A nurse shows up and slaps on three ace bandages, a temporary splint, gives me a set of  crutches, and the name and telephone number of an  orthopedic doctor I need to call for an appointment.  She advised that if I called as soon as possible I might get lucky and get in to see the doctor within a day or so.  I was wheeled to my car, patted on the head, and sent on my way.

That was three hours of my life I’ll  never get back.  All I really received was a grand tour of their facility, free use of a wheelchair for three hours, three ace bandages, a fiberglass splint, and a really lovely pair of crutches.  Fortunately I called the orthopedist from my car and was able to get an appointment for tomorrow.  It would have been easier and cheaper just to cut the damn leg off and call it a day.

Trust me, I’ll keep you updated.