21 October 2010

Broken, Fractured...and Dislocated - Part III

Every bump on the ride over was felt.  My dangling hand is a pretty good vibration meter for the car.  We arrive at the hospital and at the ER.  Again, there was paper work to be filled out and again the receptionist questioned my injury.  Well, if the dangling hand is not obvious enough, I have x-rays to prove it.  So, there.

Luckily, my situation was severe enough to move to the head of the line.  My name was called soon after sitting in the waiting room.   As you know, that means nothing.  I went to another room where a nurse looked at my x-rays and did some paper work.  Then, moved to the actual emergency room.  We are now at about 2:00AM, more than two hours after I kicked that net's ass.

Here is something I did not know.  In the emergency room, there is only one doctor.  One.  One doctor, the rest are nurses and technicians.  So needless to say, the wait was long as priority goes to those with more serious needs.  Broken bone, severe...but not life threatening severe.  Many times the nurses and technicians had me ready to go.  But, the doctor kept on getting called to other patients.  I tried to sleep, but the fear of dropping my arm kept me up.  Funny, I just realized this, they should have given me some pillows to prop my arm up. 

Finally, about 5:30AM, it was my turn.  The crew had already plugged tubes and connected monitoring wires on me.  I was going to be sedated for this one.  Not like I want to be awake for this.  There was quite a large crowd for this ordeal.  There was two nurses monitoring vitals, one was in charge of pumping me with pain killers and anesthesia.  There was also two technicians that monitored oxygen and some other thing.  One nurse that was in charge of getting the fiberglass splint ready.  Oh, then there was the doctor.  Dr. Brian Cameron, great looking guy, could easily be a model for Guess or Armani.  So, there were six people, all for me.

The time is 5:50AM, and the doctor gives the order to sedate me.  Just before that, they  had to cut my Nike Dri-Fit shirt.  This is going to be awesome...not the shirt cutting, the sedating.  He called my name, I responded.  So, he asked for 3 more milligrams.  Milligrams of what?  Not sure, but the next thing I remember is a nurse calling my name and asking me a bunch of questions.  I responded, not knowing that they popped my wrist back in to place.  Let me tell you, coming out of sedation is kinda fun.  I noticed the time was just after 6:00AM.  I was only under for five to seven minutes.

So, what did they do?  The nurse tells me that he pulled on my arm while the doctor pulled on my hand.  The wrist just popped right in.  I could imagine there was some unwanted movement due to having the radius broken, and I would be in a shit load of pain.  My wife said she thought she heard me grunting during the procedure.  Yeah, good thing I was not up for that.

By the way, there is video of me coming out of sedation.  It is quite hilarious as I just kept on rambling as I tried to respond and answer everyone.

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Go to Part I - Part II - Part IV - Part V - Part VI - Part VII - Part VIII

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