February 24, 2003

An unwelcome vacation from work

Through A Glass Darkly, by John Myers, Internet Photojournalist
The morning of Feb. 4 was overcast and cloudy when I started work at 9, but by 10 the sun came out. I grabbed a camera and headed to Roberdel to work on a feature article.
I parked just across the Roberdel bridge and crossed the road to take some photos of the Roberdel lake and dam. But after taking several photos, I got a warning message from the digital camera -- no memory left. Dummy me, I had grabbed a small flash card for the camera instead of a larger one, and had already filled up the card with Roberdel photos.
Irritated, I headed back to the car to hurry back to the office for a larger flash card. The sun waits for no man, and I wanted to get some more photos while it was still shining.
I looked left before crossing the highway; no cars were coming on the Roberdel bridge. I looked right, and waited for a car coming down the hill. When it passed, I stepped quickly out onto the road, but immediately knew I had made a possibly fatally mistake.

The awful sound of squealing tires

I will never forget as long as I live the sound of tires squealing and the awful "whump" of me bouncing off the hood of a black pickup truck. As I was flying through the air, the only thoughts I had time to form were "What have I done now? Killed myself?"
But instead of flying on up to the pearly gates, I landed on the pavement, and was still alive and seemed more or less intact, though the breath was knocked out of me -- hard.
The driver of the pickup truck was the first one to me and asked if I was all right. I said I was OK and apologized for doing such a stupid thing as stepping out in front of him.
Soon some other people arrived and all advised me to lie still and wait for the ambulance. But I sat up and began to feel silly sitting in the middle of the road tying up traffic, so I insisted on getting up and moving out of the road, with some assistance from others.
As soon as I tried to stand, I knew my left leg was hurt. Apparently my left knee or thereabouts had hit the pickup truck's bumper. But it didn't hurt terribly bad as I hobbled off the road slowly. Maybe I'm only going to be sore and bruised, I thought as I moved.
Some kind soul took off his jacket for me to sit on over on the shoulder of the road.

An unwelcome ride to the hospital

In a few minutes, the ambulance arrived and though I offered to sit up in the back, they don't have any easy chairs in those things. So I rode to the hospital on a stretcher.
At the emergency room, they took x-rays of my left leg and the ER doctor informed me I had a break in my fibula. She seemed mostly concerned about my ankle, so I got the impression that's where the break was. They put on a temporary splint from my ankle to below my knee and sent me home with a referral to see a bone doctor for more treatment.
The bone doctor two days later showed me the x-ray. I have a clean break just below my knee, and the two ends of the break were only slightly offset. The good news, he said, is that I have no ligament or tendon damage in the ankle as was originally feared, and will need no surgery. A break in the fibula often causes ligament damages in the ankle, he said.
He said since the fibula or shin bone is not a weight-bearing bone (I didn't know that. Yet another gap is filled in my vast store of ignorance) that I wouldn't have to wear a cast if I would promise to stay off the leg for at least two weeks and keep it elevated. I promised quickly that I could do that. I've worn a cast once before, on my left arm for six weeks when I was 16. It was not an experience that I would care to ever repeat again.

Waiting for broken leg to heal

So that's what I've been doing since Feb. 4, sitting on my ever-spreading posterior with my left leg encased in ace bandages and elevated on a stool, padded with pillows.
Occasionally, when I couldn't endure sitting in one position any longer, I'd get up slowly and hobble slowly to another chair, to a couch or to the bed and vegetate a while longer.
I graduated from crutches to a cane as my second week of confinement ended, and on Feb. 20, the bone doctor released me to go back to work. I returned to work on Monday.
Most of all, I'm thankful to be alive. Stepping out in the road without looking is definitely the stupidest thing I've done in quite some time, probably ranking right up there at the apex of my entire 55 years.
I should have learned in kindergarten to look both ways before I step out into the road, but I'm so ancient they didn't have kindergarten when I started school in the dark ages.
But I firmly believe that is one lesson I have learned and won't need any reminders.
Your prayers are coveted that I will heal quickly and get rid of my cane and my limp.