I have never been good with winter. Yesterday's events take this to an entirely new level.
Monday, 7:50 AM. I'm about to enter my school, hoping there's enough time before class to clear out my locker and the exceptional amounts of awful ceramics it contains (thanks to Studio Art I for that). Five minutes should be enoug--
SLIP
SLAM
I still don't know whether it was the fall or the landing that did it. What I do know is that a patch of near-invisible ice shoved my feet out from under me, followed shortly after by a body-slam from the concrete. Something was broken. I knew it. I am never wrong about this. I'm something of a veteran when it comes to broken bones.
My father has a bone condition called osteogenesis imperfecta. This is Latin for "doomed to pay unnecessarily large amounts of money for health insurance." The defect impairs your body's ability to make the connective tissue that your skeletal system needs. The practical upshot is brittle bones. There is no reliable treatment and no cure.
His was a fairly mild case. Mild enough that he could join the Marine Corps (and rise to the rank of major) without ever being diagnosed. Through the miracle of genetics, I inherited the defect in a more noticeable form. "Noticeable" as in "capable of breaking a leg, then breaking it again the day the cast came off, then breaking it a third time." The diagnosis came soon after.
A fractured collarbone when sledding on Big Bear Mountain. A broken elbow (the right one) the first day of our family vacation to Hawaii. A broken arm (the left one) after stepping on a dodgeball. A thrice-broken foot: once while running, once while lifting weights in a supposed "recovery" program, and once when walking into a chair. My current favorite? Four fractured ribs after being hit by a car.
Of this last, I am fairly sure that my chemistry book saved me from a punctured lung. When I got hit, my backpack absorbed most of the force, spun off and landed on the sidewalk. Weeks later, I opened my pack to find the book with a huge dent in the front cover. So remember, kids, chemistry could save your life. And as long as I'm giving out advice, morphine is not all it's cracked up to be.
Back to yesterday morning. Back to the concrete. The familiar pain came, centered on my left ankle. Fracture pain is the same every time. At first, it's awful. Then your adrenaline kicks in, and it goes away. Then your adrenaline goes away, and it comes back with a vengeance...then, over the course of hours, it fades. Twitch the wrong muscle or move the wrong way, and it flares up, but leave whatever's broken alone and chances are it'll leave you alone.
I prepared myself for at least a few hours at the doctor's office. The assistant principal, a student, and my mother (who had dropped me off literally seconds ago) helped me into the car. Mom, still in her pajamas, called the clinic to let them know we were coming. She then drove home and assembled the kit: several half-finished bottles of military-grade pain medication (from previous breaks), a pair of crutches, and a walking cast with Velcro straps.
Be prepared.
Continued in Part 2
No comments:
Post a Comment