This post will take me a while – I can’t type for very long at a time yet and will need to take a lot of breaks. So, here we go:<\/p>\n
12\/19\/2014 – Heading into work and parking in the deck because it’s snowing. I’m loaded down with Christmas presents for my co-workers and both hands are full. I step onto the sidewalk and hit a patch of ice.<\/p>\n
In the span of a heartbeat, both feet came off the ground and I went horizontal in mid-air. Then, impact.<\/p>\n
The first and worst was my left elbow – then my head took the rest of the force. I lay on the ground for a minute – stunned – then forced myself to my feet and assessed the damage. My elbow was hurting pretty bad, but I had the foresight to take a picture of the area – just in case – then gathered my belongings and walked through the grass down the street to my building. My left arm was worthless at this point, but I got in the office and got my coat off. I didn’t know how bad it was, so I delivered the Christmas presents and checked my email. It wasn’t getting any better, but it’s tough to see your own elbow so I asked another co-worker to take a look.<\/p>\n
The reaction when she saw it was enough to send me on my way. I canceled my appointments for the day by email, checked in with another co-worker, and carefully made my way back to my car and from there – to the emergency room.<\/p>\n
It took a while to navigate the valet-ish parking, then I got checked in. And I waited 15 minutes while my arm continued to swell alarmingly.<\/p>\n
A staff member came out and took a group of us back and assigned us to rooms – like a cattle call. Where I waited again for another 15 minutes. As long as I held very still, I was okay. Any movement and I was hurting.<\/p>\n
A nurse came in and started to work with me. When I said that it might be workers comp – she left to get a form. Another nurse – perhaps an angel? – came in and took charge. She carefully helped me get my dress shirt off, got me an ice pack and a pillow and generally fussed over me until the doctor came in. I was still hurting bad, but mentally feeling better that someone was looking after me.<\/p>\n
The doctor said I needed an x-ray and I was trundled down the hall to get that done. The techs had me position my arm into some terrible shapes, then sent me back to the room with a tissue to wipe my eyes. Yeah, I cried. Doesn’t make me less of a bad-ass.<\/p>\n
The doctor came back after a while and said – “It’s broken”. He and a colleague put me in a splint, gave me a prescription, and sent me on my way with a referral.<\/p>\n
I called my boss from the parking lot and explained what was going on – then went home. I made an appointed to see another doctor on the 22nd in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
Later that evening I got my prescription filled and spent a lot of time with my arm in a sling trying to find a position that didn’t hurt.<\/p>\n
It didn’t really work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This post will take me a while – I can’t type for very long at a time yet and will need to take a lot of breaks. So, here we go: 12\/19\/2014 – Heading into work and parking in the deck because it’s snowing. I’m loaded down with Christmas presents for my co-workers and both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1737,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions\/1737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}