Medical Horrors Week, day 1

I am already 2 days behind on this, as I am 2 days behind on writing prompts posts. Mel threw it out after the suggestion by Curtal Friar. Saturday and Sunday, I was all motivated to blog. This week, not so much.

Ok, so I will start it off with the tale of my first broken bone. When I was in 1st grade, and still just 6 years old, I was involved in a playground incident that resulted in a broken leg. I won’t go into the details of how it happened, because it’s too hard to explain, but the gist of it was a fall. I also won’t go into the fit my dad threw over the incident because that is irrelevant to the rest of the story. Anywho, I will point out that at that time, we still didn’t have a telephone at the house so the school had to call Aunt Iris who had to send someone to our house to let my dad know. The incident happened in the morning before school started, which is relevant.

Daddy picked me up, and took me straight to town to the ER. Ok, again remember I was 6, and so my memory of some of the details are iffy (and I can’t ask Daddy anymore), so just go with it. I can remember someone coming out of the ER with Daddy to the car, but I never went inside the hospital. I think there wasn’t an xray tech there that day. Somehow we ended up at Dr. Buchanan’s office, though I don’t remember if the hospital sent us there or Daddy just went from dr’s office to dr’s office until he found one with an xray that could squeeze me in. I also don’t know exactly how long we sat in that office, but I remember sitting in the chair falling asleep. I am sure I was exhausted from crying all morning until Daddy picked me up. Anyway, my leg would “jump” while I was asleep and wake me up because it hurt when I moved it.

So finally, we went back to get the xray, and I hadn’t straightened out my leg the whole morning, because 1) I had been sitting since the accident and 2) it hurt to move it. Dr. Buchanan was not dealing well with my new meltdown, and Daddy wasn’t either. Daddy had to physically hold my upper body down so Dr Buchanan and the nurse(s) could straighten out my leg for the xray. 6 year old me was so mad at all of them, but projected that anger on Dr Buchanan for years.

But, my tibia was cracked, and I didn’t need a full cast, just a splint. I missed 6 weeks of school because I was a little *&% about the splint being so heavy, and wouldn’t use the crutches. The school didn’t hold the time missed against me because I think 1) they were probably grateful Daddy didn’t sue and 2) they had wanted to skip me up a grade or 2 in Kindergarten and knew I wasn’t going to fall behind.

And after the way my dad over-reacted to the whole incident, and my perceived “injustice” (for lack of a better word) at Dr Buchanan’s office, I never told my parents when I broke my wrist in the 5th or 6th grade. I’m also pretty sure I cracked my collar bone in 6th grade, but I kept that to myself too.

Oh, and I just remembered another incident resulting in a trip to the ER. I may milk posts for the rest of the week now. LOL

5 Responses to 'Medical Horrors Week, day 1'

  1. MacBros says:

    Never broken a bone…. *knock on wood*

  2. mel says:

    Now hold on there, lady. I want to know the full story. I want to know how it happened and why your dad was so angry. Irrelevant or not, I want to know!

    • DragonLady says:

      Ok, I will try. I was on the playground on what we called the “blister bars.” That’s the one that looks like the horizontal ladder. I’m sure that is what is known as “monkey bars,” but we had another thing on the playground we called monkey bars. Anyway, I always sucked at the blister bars, because I was weak in upper body strength, and couldn’t do the ladder rungs. I had go across using the outer bars instead of the inner rungs. So, I went out there and a 2nd grader named Buck (his nickname actually) asked be if I wanted to play chicken. Chicken on the blister bars entailed 2 people meeting in the middle, wrapping their legs around each other’s legs and seeing who could hang the longest. Naturally I said “No” because I had no upper body strength and would lose anyway. LOL So I get on the blister bars and start across, but Buck decided not to take no for an answer and came up behind me and wrapped his legs around mine anyway. I was stuck. I couldn’t keep going and hung for as long as I could, but when I dropped, I took Buck with me, and he landed on me. I’m sure I landed on a rock too.

      The reason Daddy was so mad was this: There was no teachers on the playground before school. Now, this was no secret, and Kindergarten and 1st grade were not supposed to go out on the playground before school because of no teacher supervision. So he was mad that there was no teacher on the playground, even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to be out there anyway. And after that incident there was always a teacher on duty before school.