A small bump in the road...

Meet my new best friend.

We returned from the regatta Monday evening.  I spent the next day unwinding from the long drive by cleaning the boat plus gear and getting everything stowed back in the boat house.  I finished in time to squeeze in the 1-3 pm public session at my home ice, Bowie Ice Arena.  I wanted one more run through of the elements required to pass the gamma level test.  After about an hour and a half into a lightly populated two session, I decided to do one more 7-step Mohawk combo on my weak side since previous attempts were not consistently solid.  I don't know if I touched blades (can't recall hearing the click of death) or if I just caught an edge but no matter, one second I was up and the next second I was down on my wrist and I knew right away that my luck had run out. At the time that I fell there was one other skater on the ice.  She skated over when she saw that I couldn't get up (I needed to use both hands in order to get a knee under me and I couldn't put weight on the right wrist).  She offered me a hand and I told her that I didn't want to risk pulling her down.  She just grabbed me by the good hand and hoisted me off the ice like a sack of potatoes.  Nothing wrong with her upper body strength!  I skated off the ice and while one of the coaches got me a bag of ice another rink employee removed my skates and helped me get my street shoes on. They asked if I thought I could drive to the doctor's to get checked out.  I looked out the windows (it was a warm sunny day) at the little Austin Healey Sprite (stick shift) that I'd driven that day and said "I think so".  Fortunately for me Xenopus, the frog eye Sprite is right hand drive and so shifting gears is accomplished with the left hand.

Xenopus

I drove the Sprite home and was able to get the garage door up, the little car in and the garage door down in between waves of pain.  I reasoned that the trip to the doctor would be better suited in a car with an automatic gearbox--especially for the drive home.  I drove the few miles to our primary care physician and she immediately ordered an xray and referred me to a group of orthopedic surgeons in the next building.  I walked over and got the xray which confirmed that I had a fracture in the distal end of my right radius.  The wrist specialist was not in the office that day so they passed me on to the ER of Anne Arundel Medical Center, some 15 miles away.  They called ahead so that I wouldn't have to wait too long and I drove over. Once checked through the initial paperwork (don't know if anyone can every read my signature), I sat down and called my wife to let her know not to wait supper on me.

The trauma specialist took an interest in me after hearing how I'd broken my arm.  He must not see that many active geezers so maybe I brightened his day.  Before manually reducing my fracture he told me he was going to give me a shot to numb things up a bit.  I watched as he struggled to draw the dose into the syringe.  After an unsuccessful attempt he asked one of the nurses for an 18 gauge needle.  Now I'm a molecular biologist working at a human nutrition research lab and am very familiar with needle sizes--an 18 gauge needle has about the bore size of a Pasteur pipette.  For those outside of the allied health & science fields, we're talking huge!  I steeled myself for what I figured was coming next and got busy with my "game face".  He looked over and must have realized that I knew something about needle sizes because he said "don't worry, I'll change back to a 27 gauge once I draw the local out of this vial". And so he did.  A physician's assistant held the palm and fingers of my hand while the attending physician grabbed my forearm and elbow.  He tweaked the alignment on either side of the break while viewing an endless string of images via some sort of soft xray device.  I noticed that he and his assistants all wore lead aprons but didn't offer me one.  I suppose at my age they assume my fathering days are behind me!  After setting the bones to his satisfaction, his minions quickly cast my arm from palm to elbow before the alignment could change and that was that. His final instruction before disappearing was for me to sleep with my arm vertical to avoid swelling--I tried by propping my arm with a pillow but failed at that bit of advise!  He also told me that although my break didn't require surgical reduction, the time I'd be in cast (and off the ice) would be shorter if I wanted to go that route.  He said that I could mull that over and make a decision next week when I go to his office for follow up visit.  After he left a nurse came and gave me final instructions.  He then asked how I proposed getting home.  I indicated that I'd driven to the hospital with a broken arm and assumed I'd be able to leave the same way.  He said that they couldn't forbid my plan but that they strongly discouraged it.  I asked him to point me in the general direction of the parking garage.  I got home fine.  Diaristwoman poured me a glass of Merlot and told me that a skating friend from her work recommended that I hereafter avoid doing the "slutz".  I feel just like Rodney Dangerfield.

So, two steps forward towards returning to the ranks of credible skaters and one step back.  Obviously there will be no gamma test for me tomorrow.  This blog will also take a short break--ha ha, short break--get it?  But, no worries, I'll be back.  I've heard it said that there's two kinds of skaters in this world:  ones who've already broken a bone and those who will...

Until next time, smooth ice,
Yr faithful Diarist