A New Dance

Over the last fourteen days I took a fall. Rode in an ambulance twice. Spent two different days in two different ER's and one day in an out-patient OR. Lots of pain and lots of pain meds. My life took a turn. Here's my story.

Pain is a strange experience. Medical people ask you "On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the worst pain you've ever felt, what level of pain would you say you are at right now?"

I fell on my knee onto a concrete surface. My entire weight fell onto my left patella. After rescuing the iPad from the water, I grabbed my knee and could feel the pieces. When the EMT guy asked me about my pain level I thought about different pains in life and determined that this was a mere 6. My face said otherwise. They have a little 1-10 chart with a smiley face progressing to a grimacing face.  My face said 10.

I was out-of-state when I fell. Far from home, I received wonderful care. The EMT guys, the ER staff and the radiologist were all kind and took good care of me. I am thankful.

We decided to drive on home. I was drugged up and my knee was stabilized in a brace. Nauseous and loopy and exhausted my husband and I began to learn the first steps to a new dance. This dance routine is called Get-in-the-car. Being in pain with one none-working leg takes getting-in-the-car  to a whole new level.

Hubby-dear and I have learned many things on this new dance routine. One thing we learned is that when the Nurse Practitioner at the ER in Tennessee writes a prescription for pain medication, the Walgreen's in Arkansas cannot honor it. We  crossed back over the Mississippi and found a Walgreen's in Tennessee.

Heroic hubby-dear drove the many miles back to our Texas home. At 2:30 a.m., we practiced more steps to our dance routine called Get-out-of-the car. Hugging and cheering me on, hubby-dear managed to get wobbly me and my crutches into bed.