Nearly three weeks ago, I broke my wrist. I've never broken any bones previously, so this is an entirely new experience for me. Everyone wants to know how it happened since I am now 76 years old and I suspect they wonder if it was age-related (as I am now forced to type with one hand).
We have 3 or more outdoor stray cats we feed. Two black cats that Mark named Buster and Benny. And a white and gray cat we were told long ago is named Max. (He's been around the neighborhood for years, having once lived near the golf course but then migrated toward our corner of the community. Another woman also has fed and cared for him, too. But she stopped by a few days ago to see about Max and explained that she has not seen Max for some time now. I assured her that he was fine, but he figured prominently in my wounded situation as I held up my second, smaller and lighter cast.)
Max had showed on our front porch in the afternoon, Tuesday September 30th, looking for food. I had just put up our porch Halloween decorations for the holiday.
I went inside to get him some dry food. When I returned, he was gone. I figured he'd gone around to the front of the house, so I headed to the driveway. There, I still did not see him. But I started to hear what sounded like the low yowling of an imminent cat fight between Max and, likely, this newly stray gray cat with a long, puffy tail and white paws on the other side of the tall hedge that divides the front of our house from that of our neighbor. As I moved closer to the hedge, I yelled for the two cats to stop.
I was worried about Max and was distracted. I failed to look down at the large, sharp-edged, metal cactus planter that a departed neighbor had given to Mark many months ago. Still looking straight ahead, I was shocked to feel myself suddenly pitching forward in an unexpected and uncontrolled fall. Only in the slow descent to the ground did I suspect what was happening and why I was falling,
I reactively reached out my left arm to break my sudden plunge forward. I could feel my arm getting submerged into the hedge. As my body finally came to wrest on solid ground, with no more forward momentum, I pulled my arm out of the lowest branches, only to discover that my hand and wrist were distorted. I knew instantly that something important was broken.
One look at the results of the fall caused me to start loudly shrieking. I awkwardly rose to my feet, holding my left arm up like a useless stump. I started shrieking because I knew I needed help. But we live on a quiet street of empty rentals.
I got into the house. Found my cell flip phone. With difficulty, I dialed Mark at work. All I could yell when he answered was, "I broke my wrist! I BROKE MY WRIST!! Call Ann to take me to the emergency room!"
I know now I was in shock. My left leg had two bloody gashes in the front and another scrape on the top of my left foot. In the Emergency room, Ann filled out the paperwork for me as the staff tried to take my vitals. My blood pressure, what they could get of it, was incredibly low.
They took X-rays. Nurses came and went. Ann took pictures to send to a distraught Mark. A doctor explained what they were going to do to fix my wrist. The one positive was that no bones were protruding through skin, so no surgery was needed.
I was put into a twilight zone by drugs, though my entire right arm was burning when it should have just been the injection site. That was agony until it stopped.
While I was under, I could still see the ceiling and hear vague voices. But my perception began to get weird. I believed I was in some sort of Matrix. I was being attended to by aliens. Reality was not real. When I heard my sister's voice, I knew that she was a part of this vast conspiracy against me. I was in some cosmic operating room of the damned. Of course, I also reasoned that I was nobody. Why was this happening to me? Who were these aliens and why was I their test subject?
Faces zoomed in on my face and asked me questions. What was my name? What year was it? With lips and brain that barely seemed to function, I mumbled my feeble replies.
For two weeks I wore the large, heavy, fore-arm cast. This past Monday the orthopedic doctor at Eisenhower Medical Center had the staff replace it with one less restrictive and lighter.
Just before the fall, I was already taking antibiotics for a UTI. And I had an appointment for a biopsy of a splotch on the back of my neck. I was not in the best of shape to begin with.
I have reverted to my childhood where I cannot tie my own shoelaces. Cannot type except with one hand. Have a really tough, or impossible, time opening up cans, jars, packaging.
In the days immediately after, I kept thinking how unreal it all was. How, had Max not shown up or not walked away, I would still be fine. Or had I not allowed myself to be distracted, remembered the planter and looked down for just a moment, it would not have happened. Sort of like taking out single events that, when combined, lead to the Titanic sinking.
I experienced days of taking antibiotics when Immediate Care contacted me to say that my UTI was drug resistant. I would soon hear from the dermatologist that the skin issue on my neck was cancerous and needed to be treated.
In addition to these physical blows to my wellbeing, I got yet another teaching rejection from College of the Desert, even when they had three impending openings in the English Department.
I have been watching one of my favorite classic TV series on DVD, M*A*S*H (it's not available on hi def Blu-ray discs and streaming costs $19.99 per season, for each of the 11 seasons--too much). So, I dragged out the DVD discs and started with Season One several weeks ago.
I am up to Season 5. While I could appreciate the first 3 seasons, I actually preferred from Season 4 onward when Harry Morgan was introduced as Col. Sherman Potter to replace McLean Stevenson's Henry Blake, and Mike Ferrel as BJ Hunnicut was added to replace Wayne Rogers' Trapper John.
While I have watched the DVD set several years ago, once I hit Season 4 a week or so ago, I was transported back to my Air Force career and my stationing at Minot AFB when I first saw each episode in the original broadcast. I was back in my BOQ room, watching M*A*S*H on my RCA 19-inch TV.
The second episode of Season 5 featured a personal favorite, "Fallen Idol", in which Hawkeye feels guilty about Radar being wounded on his way to Seoul. He gets drunk. Shows up hungover to operate. Gets chewed out by Col. Potter. Gets into a tiff with Radar. Gets chewed out again by Potter and several others at the 4077th. As he sits by himself outside post op, newly added Major Winchester sarcastically observes, "Sitting with all your friends, I see."
I had a similar experience near the end of my 742nd tour at Minot. A deputy of mine and I got into a tiff on alert. I politely asked him to do something, and he exploded at me. We yelled at one another for a few brief moments. In the crew vehicle on the ride back to base, I am not sure which of us brought it up; but I told him he could ask for a crew transfer. Well, he did. But who knows what BS he told our new Squadron Commander? When I was called into the new commander's office, he laid into me. Even said that if the Air Force Academy knew what I was really like, they would not hire me. I was appalled. I had no idea what my former deputy told him. I was too perplexed to even ask what lies were said about me. He never even asked to hear my side of the confrontation.
From that point on, I was a crew commander without a permanent deputy. I went out with a different one on each alert. And then my assignment at Minot came to an end after 235 alerts. Yet I always identified with Hawkeye in that M*A*S*H episode. You do a great job in a very tough assignment for over four years but when someone spreads BS about you, you finish your tour under a cloud with no idea what had been said about you.
