Archive for the ‘Journal’ Category
I found out the hard way that having a broken leg as we come into the holiday season is a mixed blessing. I’m three and a half weeks into this injury with at least three more weeks before I can start walking on it again on a limited basis. I’m quickly finding out that the boredom and being housebound is worse than the actual injury itself.
I found myself becoming a little hard to live with since I’ve apparently developed a rather bad temper. I just can’t seem to adjust to this slower lifestyle and my better-half is paying the price for it. With lots of Christmas season activities on the horizon she’ll be overloaded with decorating, baking, and house cleaning. I plan on helping where I can but truthfully I won’t be much help.
I put myself on her sh** list a few days ago. She knew how much I was itching to get out of the house so she took my car keys to work with her to keep me from doing something crazy. Being the persistent pain-in-the-ass that I am I found my extra set of keys hidden in a secret location. I hobbled to the garage, jumped in the car and drove a few miles to get a fresh cup of coffee and a sandwich. It wasn’t easy fitting my big ass, crutches, and the huge air cast into the front seat but I did it anyway. I made the trip without incident and returned home feeling pretty proud of myself. That lasted until my better-half got home from work then the you-know-what hit the fan. I’m now officially grounded. That hasn’t happened to me for a very long time and I don’t like it any better now than I did then. I pushed my luck with my little trip but now I’m paying the price for my stupidity.
I returned to the orthopedist for my three week exam and received nothing but good news. The bone is knitting itself nicely and no surgery will be required. I’m now permitted to slowly increase the amount of weight on it over the next three weeks. At that point I’ll be scheduled for some limited physical therapy and hopefully I’ll be back on my feet and ready to party by New Years.
I wouldn’t wish this kind of injury on my worst enemy. It’s frustrating and humbling to find yourself helpless. Last night as I was watching TV I heard my better-half upstairs doing something. A few minutes later she started down the steps when I heard a loud crash. She screamed my name and I hopped my way over to the stairs. She had fallen much like I had and fortunately only bruised her thigh, leg, and hand. She broke no bones but she’ll be sore as hell for a few days. We should be made the official poster children for CLUMSY. I may be forced to install a damn elevator so the two of us don’t cripple ourselves permanently.
Happy Effing Holidays! 2013, a year to remember and then immediately forget.
Today is my ninth day living in this one-legged hell my life has become. I’ve learned a few valuable things in these nine days and I thought I’d share them with you.
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First, don’t break your damn leg. I know it’s a bit simplistic but sometimes you just need to be told the obvious.
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Second, hope and pray your relationship is solid because it will be tested. I’ve become somewhat irritable and difficult or at least that’s what my better-half has been screaming at me.
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Third, prepare yourself for the realization that all it takes is a small bone in your leg to break to turn you into a giant dependent ball of human flesh.
I was raised to be as independent as possible and have spent my entire life just that way. I hate relying on anyone for anything. I’ve had a few times in my life where I was laid up for a day or two but nothing like this. Six to eight weeks of sitting on my ass and stumbling around the house being unable to do a damn thing. It’s incredibly frustrating to say the least. My better-half remains supportive but realizes I’m quickly going out of my mind with cabin fever.
I’ve improved my walking abilities with these crutches but it’ll never be enough to make this situation bearable. Since I’m unable to carry coffee and walk on crutches at the same time it took a day or two for me to solve that problem. A sealable carry-mug that fits nicely into my pocket was the solution. I can now walk/hop/drag a leg to the kitchen, retrieve some coffee, and return to my chair. It sounds stupid I know but it’s a major accomplishment for me.
Thank God for my X-Box and IPad. Those two devices are the only things keeping me from going bat-shit crazy. I’ve always spent a lot of time on the X-Box but now it’s totally out of control. I’m afraid I may be developing a serious case of X-Box thumbs. The IPad has allowed me to connect with hundreds of other addicted Scrabble fanatics to play Word HD with Friends. A great little App that allows me to continuously play multiple games with people from around the country. The time really flies by very quickly when I’m focused in those games.
I received some good news on my follow-up visit to the orthopedist today. The leg is healing properly and no surgery will be required. I’m to spend the next two weeks doing things much the same as I’ve been doing. That news raised my morale a bit and hopefully in two more weeks I’ll be permitted to put some weight on the leg which will really jump start this recovery.
One other quick note. My better-half suggested a trip to Walmart today to pickup a few items and somehow strong-armed me into riding on one of their infamous electric carts. I put up a good fight but there was no talking to her. For years I’ve bitched and complained about certain people on those carts blocking aisles and being a general nuisance to other shoppers. Well, today I joined the elite ranks of the Walmart Disabled Shoppers Group. I was hoping for a Walmart hat or T-shirt but sadly I was out of luck. They wanted to give me a pair of pink sweat pants that had “JUICY” on the ass but I declined. Pink just isn’t my color. It clashes way too much with my purple sweatshirt and my orange Budweiser baseball cap. That’s my official Walmart shopping outfit.
We’re headed back home now where I’ll enjoy another afternoon of Scrabble, Tiger Woods 2011, and really bad TV. I must have done something really terrible in a past life to deserve this karmic ass-kicking.
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.
Well I was planning on spending some time writing about a few useless things today but it appears that won’t be happening. I was out of bed and on my second cup of coffee and feeling pretty good. That ended just a few minutes ago without much warning. I was going downstairs to take out some trash and to turn on the computer. Our main staircase is about thirty steps straight down to the ground floor and I just made that trip in just under two seconds.
Now I’m sitting here waiting for my ride to the hospital because I think I may have broken my leg or my ankle or just injured them badly. The pain is bad but not critical but I can’t walk on it at all. So I crawled to the computer and I’m sitting here writing this just to keep my mind occupied for a while.
I should have known that something bad was going to happen after the weird dreams I experienced just before waking this morning. I dreamt about meeting up with Bill Clinton, having a few drinks at his club, and then being abandoned when he and his driver unexpectedly left me standing along the road.
I walked a few blocks and managed to flag down a large car which strangely enough had a cargo of inmates from a local jail. The driver was kind enough to relay a message via radio to Slick Willie. He was given our location and told where to met us so he could pick me up. As his limo drove up he was standing up in the open sun roof waving at the many females walking along the side walk. He waved to me once, winked cutely, and then drove right on by and off into the sunset. All in all it was typical of what I would have expected from that SOB. Unfortunately Monica had been nowhere in sight during our encounter and fortunately for me Hillary was missing as well.
That’s the kind of dream (nightmare) I never have. Dreaming of liberals should have immediately alerted me to the real possibility of problems today but I wasn’t paying close enough attention. So here I sit in anticipation of a not-so-great day in an emergency room, being poked and prodded, and returning home unable to walk without crutches for the foreseeable future.
Just freaking wonderful Bill. I thought the days of you making me miserable were over but you’re that proverbial gift that keeps on giving. Shoot me now.
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