I’m officially old and it hurts

Last Sunday the weather in Seattle was beautiful – not a cloud in the sky and temps in the low 80s. Overwhelmed with a desire to be outside and underwhelmed with common sense I decided it would be a great idea to strap on my dusty rollerblades and take a spin around the neighborhood. Now you should know that my rollerblades were dusty because I don’t ever use them. Once or twice a year when the weather is nice and my judgment is poor I’ll strap ‘em on head outside full of enthusiasm for all of the inline possibilities that await me and then I quickly fall down scrape up a knee or a hand and go back inside.

Now anybody that knows me well knows I’m pretty heard headed – actually that’s probably putting it lightly. Anyway, determined that this time things would end differently I headed out with Amanda for some extreme 30-something skating and this time the patron saint of foolish endeavors decided to teach me a lesson.

While I was tooling around our driveway waiting for Amanda to realize what a terrific idea this was, a neighbor stuck his head out just to remind me to wear me knee and wrist pads. “Yeah” I replied back as I was thinking “why doesn’t he think I can do this?”. (Warning #1).

Unmoved, we started out with only our skates and little good sense. Immediately there was wild arm waving and much rocking back and forth, and it wasn’t long until, surprisingly, we came upon a turn that neither of us was ready for. We fell and there was much knee scrap-age. (Warning #2).

At this point I’m pretty sure that if a shrub next to me had burst into flames and told me to take off the skates and go home I would have tried to rationalize it as some kind of a dare to go on, and go on I did at an increasingly high speed down a steep hill. Tragically I soon found myself faced with another one of those pesky 90 degree turns, which I graciously maneuvered by increasing my speed until I reached the corner and then I put my heels together and spun like a corkscrew. Of course my speed made it impossible to control the spin and eventually gravity interrupted my death dance with an introduction to Mr. Concrete. When I finally came to rest on the ground my left wrist was in the shape of the letter S. Holding my broken wrist I walked the rest of the way home barefooted stopping occasionally to glance back at my youth there on the sidewalk.

Here are some of the stats I’ve collected this week.

• Doctors seen: 2
• Hours spent vomiting after being injected with enough morphine to bring down a horse: 2
• Number of splints: 2
• Number of hospital workers that came into my ER room just to look at my x-rays: I counted 5.
• Number of little girl screams I let loose as the orthopedic surgeon tried to pop my wrist back into place: 3, I think but I may have passed out.
• Number of fractures in my left wrist: too many to count
• Previous words per minute typing average: 80
• Current words per minute typing average: 20 (one handed)
• Amount of time I spend at work typing: 7hrs/day
• Recommended dosage of Percecet (sp): 1 pill / 4 hours
• Intelligence level, in hindsight: idiot

Tomorrow I’m off to see doctor #3. The orthopedic doctor I saw today that tried to set the bones referred my to an orthopedic surgeon sub-specialist who specializes in putting those tiny wrist bones back where they belong. I expect tomorrows visit will just consist of an examination/consultation, but I’m hoping we can get to the surgery this week. After three days of walking around with S wrist, at this point I’m just ready to have the thing set – pins and all.