not cracked but bruised

Someone forgot to remind me that I’m an adult this past weekend.

I was camping with my folks and my sister and her family for an early father’s day visit. They had a tent set up for me when I got there early Saturday morning and I spent much of the day hanging out with my nieces and visiting with the folks. We played games and rode bikes and in the afternoon we went to a nearby playground.

While my nieces played on the jungle gym, I tried the climbing wall. The wall curved up from the ground and then went out a bit horizontally. It wasn’t very high up and I was doing okay on it – but my feet were too big for the footholds and I started to lose my footing. I decided to just drop off and figured I’d let go with my feet first and then hang there for a moment by my hands before dropping off.

Instead of just dangling there when I let go with my feet, I instead slammed forward chest first into the wall. And then I dropped.

I lost most of my breath for a moment and tried to play it cool so that I wouldn’t alarm anyone – and so I wouldn’t be embarrassed by my stupid move.

Once I got my breath and realized I was hurting, I checked in with my brother-in-law and my dad for their advice. We all three decided that it might be a bruised or cracked rib – but there’s not much that can be done about it anyway.

I took it easy and tried to shake it off. We went for ice cream and then back to the campsite for dinner and games.

When it was time for sleep, though, I had a bit of a rough time. I was hurting and the sleeping bag and air mattress weren’t really cutting it. Fortunately, I was so tired from the day that I got a good amount of sleep anyway.

On Sunday I started to learn my limits. Sitting was okay as was standing. Breathing shallow worked and a slow walk was okay. Running, standing up, sitting down, breathing deep and twisting were all bad. Lifting heavy things was really bad. Sneezing and coughing? Agony.

The drive home was okay – I didn’t move around much in the car – and if I was careful I wasn’t too bad.

Monday and today at work, though, showed my limits. I was struggling as I moved around and it wasn’t getting better. Finally, today, I left work at 2:00 to head to ER to get an X-Ray.

I waited patiently and did a little paper folding in the exam room. The nurse practitioner poked and prodded at my ribs and then squeezed my back and chest at the same time. It hurt so bad I nearly fall over – an indication of a break or a crack.

I got an x-ray and waited some more – then they came back and said they didn’t see a crack but it might have been too small to show up. The NP gave me some meds for the pain. As I took the blue pills I asked if they were going to send me back into the Matrix.

He didn’t get it.

They said I needed to keep working on deep breathing so that my lungs would n’t get fluid accumulated in them – which could lead to pneumonia. I got a plastic device that I have to use hourly while I’m awake and it’s going to be a rough couple weeks while I heal up.

Could have been a lot worse and I hope I learned something from this.

Knowing me, though, I’m not so sure.