THE SKELETON IN MY BODICE

The CT scan is actually much more clear, but this will have to do for now. It's really self explanatory, after reading my description of its current state. J tells me that the x-ray taken at the hospital had the broken piece of bone floating above the surface but it was correctly aligned. This is why we are able to conclude that "reducing" the dislocation is what caused the pitiful misalignment. The other things shown by the CT Scan are the many bone shards hovering around the break. They're waiting for reabsorbtion. Sounds like something on the Sci Fi channel, or Star Trek. You know, like the Borg ship reabsorbing and assimilating lost members.

So what does all of this add up to? In the immediate sense, I am now a prisoner of this grotesque injury, commanded to keep it perfectly immobile for 3-4 weeks. Physical therapy will then attempt to rehabilitate the shoulder. This involves passive movement only for an additional 3-4 weeks. If all of the above comes to naught, my shoulder will be reassessed. In the mean time I can no longer be a physical participant in my own life.

TSI PART II

Just as I managed to unlock the door, a gurney with two extremely large EMT's appeared. (I could have sworn they were wearing red soup bowls upside down on their heads) Evidently I wasn't calm, imagine that! One of my inquisitors rescuers kept yelling, "calm down ma'am", over and over, louder and louder. Evidently I must have started screaming again when they picked me up off the floor and put me on the gurney. Out from behind them appeared a gray faced township police officer, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else but at my back door. He asked if the phone in my bra might have my husband on the other end. Then I understood his appearance. J has that effect on people when he's using his official voice. Back on the gurney, they decided to put me in the ambulance s l o w l y. Turns out my blood pressure registered something akin to "barely breathing". My sister said it has to do with immense pain and shock. Even though you're screaming bloody murder, you can have a vagal incident, which sends your blood pressure into the basement.
From here on out I will refer to the EMT's as T1 and T2 (think Cat in the Hat). T1 was the calm down ma'am female who was in charge and T2 was the jolly driver who promised me the slowest possible ride to the Hospital and wanted to know why I had so many cook books. I'm not kidding here. He then proceeded to tell me in front of the baffled cop that he wanted to go to the CIA, which I understood, but the poor cop looked like he had fallen down the rabbit hole. Oh, I forgot to tell you that once I was safely on the gurney, I lost use of both arms. My right arm was holding on to my left arm, pressing it into my stomach for dear life. I'm not sure how long it took T2 to drive to the hospital, but it was long enough for my blood pressure to come up just enough to have 50mg of fentanyl 5 times. When we arrived, T1 told T2 that she would take the flack for dosing me so heavily. Seriously, the stuff never touched the pain until that last 50 mgs.

Next stop: The ER that I never knew existed

This was the ER that whisks you into a large private treatment room, no flimsy curtains in this ER. A team of medical professionals start swarming before you've been transferred from the ambulance gurney.
"No allergies, can you tell us your name, do you know where you are?.....ok, here's some dilaudid, now lets put sticky tags all over you, hook you up to machines that are going to blink and beep and bleep and warn us if you as much as sneeze."
Unfortunately Click and Clack in the x-ray department didn't get the memo that they should be quick, competent and professional. If I had a third arm, I would have attempted to smack both of their silly faces. At one point I said that I couldn't perform some contortion they devised and I would need help. Both of them looked at me like slack jawed yokels and asked what I wanted them to do. I'm afraid I lost my inhibitions somewhere between the fentanyl and dilaudid and told them to "shoot me". I then pretended to be anywhere but there, closed my eyes and let them figure it out. But I digress.
Six hours passed from arrival to discharge. The orthopod on call couldn't be f----d to come in, so he diagnosed over the phone and told them to jam my broken shoulder back into the socket..... "the piece that shattered at the top of the humeris will just jump right back where it belongs"
One minute J was there and I was awake, the next I woke up and it was all over, but the shouting, as they say. Seems that unruly broken bone decided to misbehave again and jammed itself into my humeris two inches below where it had come from.
Time to rest.....catch up with it tomorrow.

TIME TO CHANNEL BETTE AGAIN

When I started this blog a few years back, I was in the midst of my first body betrayal brought to me by that oh so merciless joker, "Aging". Although Aging has thrown a few cheap shots my way between now and then, he's actually been pretty benign. I admit it, I was the model of contentment, expecting nothing more serious than the sniffles now and then. But nobody expects TSI , either.
Two weeks ago to the day, I innocently put my lunch in the toaster oven on bake (god forbid it would have been turned to "toast", the setting which switches itself off) and set the timer. Ding, ding, ding, ding and up we get, free of care and full of the expectation for the weekend black tie fund raiser for my favorite charity. I worked very hard all year for the charity and sat on the Gala committee, successfully soliciting sponsors, auction items and looked forward to spending the evening with a fun bunch at the table we sponsored. Foolish, foolish earth woman.....
The big toe of my right foot somehow got stuck in my pant leg. My eyes grew wide in surprise, I hopped twice, certain the toe would come loose. Not sure if it did, because the next thing I remember was regaining consciousness, lying unceremoniously on the floor, with my shoulder wedged up against the bar cabinet. What the???? I also heard this blood curdling scream piercing the air. Lets see now; I wasn't expecting it, I blacked out from the excruciating pain and was brought back to consciousness by my own screaming. That's three of the four. It must be The Spanish Inquisition. (Monty Python fans are the only people who will get this, everyone else, disregard)
The next hour is a piece of time that I wish to have expunged from my permanent memory. It involved a very silly crab crawl involving one arm, one foot and one ass cheek. It also involved the serious consideration of giving up and waiting 6 hours for J to return home. But alas, that pesky toaster oven was stupidly continuing to burn brightly on the other side of the wall and it was one impossible stair step away from my twisted crab crawling self. The wireless computer keyboard was closer than the phone. Five minutes, or was it twenty, later I kicked the keyboard to the chair, kicked the cordless mouse to the floor and managed to hit reply to one of J's earlier messages, typed h e l p and clicked on send. The phone started ringing about a minute later. Of course it was miles across the room. Ok, not miles, but it rang it's full complement of rings 3 times before I crab crawled over the distance, picked up a ruler from my knitting foot stool and knocked the thing to the floor. I learned later that I was screaming unintelligibly, so J had no idea what the hell was happening or had happened. Thank goodness, he didn't let his boss send a carload of agents to the house. He did, however call 911 and stayed on the phone with me as he ran to his car and got on the road for the 1 hour commute from work to home. He gently reminded me that I would have crawl to yet another side of the room, gain access to the dead bolt key and unlock the door for the emergency people who would be arriving momentarily. After uttering some very bad language, I stuck the cordless (thank goodness for cordless technology) phone in my bra and began my final crawl across the floor.
As for the rest, I'm exhausted now and need to sleep, but I'll resume later. Typing with one hand is extremely slow.