So, I had a post about how this all happened, but for reasons I'll go into later, I deleted it. Anywho - this is the scoop:
Girls Adventure Weekend (GAW) was a ropes course at the Audubon Center of the North Woods. As a side note, we rented the climbing wall Friday night for those who wanted to do some climbing. After about 2 hours of climbing, I was going to do one more try at bouldering, which is more about endurance and problem solving than strength. It's horizontal, and your feet never go higher than about 3 feet up the rock wall. You also are not on ropes, though, but you have a spotter. Long story short, my foot slipped off a foot hold and I fell off the wall, landing all my (considerable) weight on one leg. The biggest problem is that I misjudged the distance and I was about a foot higher up than I thought I was. If you judge correctly, your body prepares for landing, which is what happened every other time I fell off the wall bouldering. If you judge poorly, your body doesn't know how to prepare and you break stuff.
The ambulance had to come and carry me out of the barn on a backboard. The ride to the hospital was torture. As a side note to AKJ, though, if I was speaking mostly in sentences and able to make snide comments, it hurt less than birth au naturel, which I judged at a 9. Because a girl's gotta have somewhere to go, right?The ambulance ride might have gone up to a 9, though.
Anyway, the greater Sandstone Medical Center, which my husband assures me was two double-wides parked together, splinted the leg, gave me some morphine, and kept me overnight since it was already almost 1 am. Pants came and got me in the morning and drove me to Mercy ER, who told me to call the Ortho clinic on Monday. Over the weekend, SIL called the MD she works for and he told her to make sure we see Dr. Pittman (Oh, Dr. Pittman!).
My MIL has been waiting for me to have a break down, and today was the day. I became convinced I had a blood clot in my calf, which is the biggest danger to me now, and broke down sobbing this morning about what a burden I was. And how bad I stink. I called Dr. Pittman, who happens to be on call this weekend, and he said it was pretty unlikely with the blood thinners I'm on, but I should have it checked out. I went to the ER to have an ultrasound, which was fine of course. He said that it hurt so much because it was a "horrible" break. He actually used that word.
Yes, and an added bonus to all of this is that I get to give myself a shot of blood thinner in the stomach every day for the next 10 days. Yay!
4 comments:
Oh, sweetie, you can say it was a breakdown, but some of us might suspect it was just for want of another talk with the handsome Dr. Pittman... ;)
No, seriously, I'm impressed at how well/long you've kept it together. It's gotta be frustrating and tedious (and painful with the shots in the tummy! Yowch!) and will continue to be so for some time. If you're ever just looking to chat, I'm around most of the day and just a phone call away. I've got Twitter up, so I'll just DM you my number in case you get feeling restless & just wanna chat.
This reminds me, and forgive the diversion, but I was always told as a kid, usually to scare me crapless when I'd been bit by some animal, that the cure for rabies involves a regimen of shots in the stomach. Does anyone know if this is true? Because if it isn't, my whole family's getting coal this Christmas.
And, you don't stink. And, I did just delete a reference to Europeans. See, we're all much better people today.
Kashka. That may have been the case way back when, but it isn't anymore. However, if you don't have the vaccine (3 shots in the arm about a week apart) and then need the shots after having been bitten, it's around 5 shots, depending on the brand, usually in the arm.
I hope the "breakdown" helped purge some of the stress and worry and frustration.
I kind of love how tactless the Godlike Dr. Pittman is. I find that sort of thing reassuring. I mean, yeah, on one hand your surgical specialist is like, "Dude, I've never seen anything this bad." But at least you know he isn't keeping anything from you!
Post a Comment