I feel like the walking dead today.
I was so exhausted when I finally hit the pillow last night, that I passed out rather than fell asleep. See, I'm usually quite a tosser and turner. I roll around, and mess up the bedsheets... except when I'm so insanely tired (or inebriated) and I wake up in the exact position that I was in when I go into bed. And that was me this morning. My sheets hadn't been moved at all, save for the bit that covered me all night.
However, I did go to sleep with a bit of a giggle, after having a slightly skewed but nonetheless hilarious conversation with Paul last night. Funny, drunken lad...
So yesterday I mentioned my broken leg. Right, you may not have noticed it, what with the fact that I let loose on the fact that I write porn! (EROTICA! Gotta remember to call it erotica!) Anyway... this is how the bloody thing happened.
I was felled by Jack Frost.
Actually, if you want to know the real truth, I was laid out by a calendar. Yes, you read that right. A freakin' calendar. You know those big, white laminated ones that students and offices use? The ones on which you can use a dry-erase marker, and just wipe and re-use over and over? That's the one.
What happened was this... it was February 2, 2001, about 7:45 in the morning, and there had been a very light snowfall the night before. It had iced over, but because it was so light, it was the kind of ice you crunch and break before you actually have the chance to slip on it. Unless of course, there's a big freakin' calendar hidden underneath! So there I was, on the sidewalk RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE (no one to sue, dammit... not that I would have sued anyway... but still...) and all of a sudden, I went down like a preacher's daughter. Now, this in itself is not that unusual. I'm a clumsy girl. I fall down a lot. All the freakin' time, actually. But this time... oh, this time... I couldn't get up. That's when I realised that the sound I'd heard a few seconds before was the resounding splack of my bones splintering. Who drops a calendar that large, and doesn't notice? I mean, honestly. And damn the snow for covering it up, thereby guaranteeing an accident that day. You know, looking back, I probably saved some other sorry soul from having an unfortunate debacle of a day. If it weren�t for me, that calendar would have stayed under the snow all day!
THANK GOD for the pretty boy who was waiting in his car in my neighbour�s driveway. He'd come to pick up one of the girls to go to school, and he saw me there, on the sidewalk and - so nice - asked if I needed help.
"Um... uh... oh God... I think I broke my leg," I stammered back at him. He jumped out of the car, and Sabrina, who'd come out of her house by this time, went to knock at my door because thankfully... Mommy was still home...
What transpired over the next minute or so was the last minute of calm and common sense that I had for the remainder of the day. My mother came out, and very quickly, I gave her and Pretty Boy instructions on where they were to hold me so I could arise from the sidewalk. That went well. It was the last thing that went well. For some reason, we thought it necessary to get my sorry broken ass up the driveway and into the house, instead of just waiting for the ambulance that had been called.
I couldn't hop.
I couldn't limp.
They couldn't drag me up.
There was just too much pain, with every option. Somehow, we made it up there, but halfway to the door, I looked down and actually saw the leg.
You know that Tropicana Orange Juice commercial? The one where the orange squeezes itself into the bottle and you can see the shape of it around the neck? Yeah, that's what my leg looked like on top of my mid-calf boot. Like there was a big ol' orange stuck inside. I demanded that they take off the boot then, so as not to have to cut it off at the hospital, when the leg would surely be bigger. Oh, how it hurt like the fires of hell! Oh holy mother of shite and damnation! What I didn't know at the time, but discovered later on... the reason pulling the damn boot off had been so bad was because I had also broken something near the ankle. When I do something, I do it well...
So, fine. We get into my front foyer. How they got me up the porch steps, I'll never know. All I remember is that there was a lot of screaming bloody murder at this point. The pain was like nothing I'd ever felt before in my life. And I've felt pain, people. I've got ovaries that kick my ass on a monthly basis. I once fell off a stage and tore a muscle in my back. THAT was hellish. (Yes, OK?! I FELL OFF A STAGE! Stop looking at me like that! I TOLD you I fall down a lot!)
Anyway, the ambulance pulls up, and the paramedics saunter toward us, not looking at all like the hotties on Third Watch, which frankly, I was really hoping for, even in my hysterical state. In retrospect, I was intensely grateful for this though, because I hadn't shaved my legs in a week or so(it was winter, ok?) and that would have just been bad... can you imagine? Hottie Med falls in love with his Broken Damsel, only to cut open her tights and find Sherwood Forest waiting for him...
Right, where was I? Ok, so the first thing they did was calm my hysteria down. I mean, one of them made me start counting to three between breaths. She explained that I was starting to hyperventilate, and if I wasn�t careful, I'd pass out. I told them if they didn't give me something to stop the bloody pain, passing out would be a good thing. For some reason, they found this funny. Funny. I'm about to chew my own limb off, and they're sharing a chuckle!
Off we go in the ambulance. It wasn't my first ride in one... yes, I fell off a stage, ok? STOP looking at me like that!
We get to the hospital, and after what seemed like hours but was probably only 20 minutes, they gave me a Percocet. Oh, lovely Percocet... but it neither lasted long nor really got rid of the pain. They put me in a little ER stall, where I literally had to wait for hours for X-rays. HOURS! By the end of hour one, I was offering passing interns and nurses $100 if only they would pleeeease give me something to take away the pain! It was sooo bad... I can't tell you... it makes me cringe just thinking about it.
Finally... FINALLY... someone came and injected me with a beautiful wondrous something.... oh, I don't know what it was... it left a hell of a bruise and a sore spot... I think she got the muscle... but Oh My God... how very, very, very loverly... the ceiling fans were so pretty... and the boy who wheeled my gurney to X-ray, well I could just tell that he loved me like he loved no other... and I think I told him so, too... just like I told him that the colours of the hospital walls were so delicate and attractive...
Yeah. There is some shame in my memories.
About 6 hours later, I was finally casted. A full-length, up to my arse, mother of a whole-leg cast. Heavier than you can possibly imagine, and already starting to chafe. The extent of my breakage was such that, even though it well below the knee, the whole leg had to be immobilised. I was shown my X-rays - a clean break in the fibula, right near the ankle. And a dirty one in the tibia. I swear, it was like someone had taken a black Magic Marker and scribbled all over a picture of my bone. Cracks hither and fro... rivers and tributaries that covered a few square inches of bone.
It wasn't until I got home that the anger started. I had a ballroom dance showcase in nine days. I had booked a trip to Montreal with Bette Parker just the night before, for May. By 8 o'clock that evening, I was screaming at no one in particular, but mostly at God. I was railing against fate and accident, and I was demanding, in my codeined state, to know what in the name of all that is holy I did so wrong that the universe had to just sh*t in my cereal...
The orthopaedic surgeon had told me that I was looking at 8 to 10 weeks in the cast. Right. From a full-length cast, to a knee-length cast, and finally to a walking cast... I was finally able to wear two shoes on August 30. February 2 to August 30. You do the math.
But I had friends and family that entertained me on a daily basis, for which I will be forever grateful. I couldn't move much, so they got me to the bathroom, and brought me food, and managed to fit me into small cars so I'd get into the outside world every so often. Yeah... I'm fine now.
But damn if that wasn't a bitch of more than half a year.
Have a lovely day, all. Watch out for stray calendars.
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