Various Discoveries Made About Different Bodies Thanks to a Fall on Black Ice

Now, I fell a few times in the last month due to the city wanting to cut corners. One such corner was to neglect to salt the sidewalks this winter. There is enough traffic on the main streets that they don't pose much trouble to the pedestrian, nor to the driver. The side streets, on which most people live, are another matter entirely. Most of the winter, due to the nature of my job, I could lessen my chances of falling by walking on the road as I was up long before traffic started up and, by the time I headed home again, traffic, or mother nature, usually took care of things so they weren't so trecherous. Not always, but usually. This isn't what I want to write about, however. What I wanted to write about are the things I have seen as a result of my last fall.

What with the heating during the day that kept melting the snow and ice only to freeze it again overnight, it was a very good environment for black ice. So it happened that I had a few falls on my way to work; a couple of them helped by a problem with my right hip that has, for almost 6 months, randomly dislocated to varrying degrees while I walk. It is nearly 100% likely that I will fall if it happens over ice. I found it better to fall with a dislocation though, as I would already be halfway down when I fell, but something that would not happen if the city was looking after things. This was not the case at 4 am on March 6th.

I started off walking on the sidewalk, but moved to the road after a few near misses of losing my footing just going around the corner. They had already been out to thros dirt on the roads. My first discovery, as I went from just walking on the road to walking squarely on the "path" of thrown dirt, was that it doesn't help in the least. No matter where I walked, the result was the same and it didn't even matter how slowly or carefully I walked. So it was that I moved back up onto the sidewalk, knowing it would be safer to fall there than to fall in the middle of the road. I had gone four or so blocks in an agonizingly slow thirty minutes before I lost my footing completely and fell hard on my right hand. Next I knew, my arm was flying out from under me and twisting sharply as it shot behind me. I slipped about a dozen times after that and nearly lost my feet again another 6 before I could get help as I couldn't release my right hand long enough to even make an attempt to reach my cellphone and call for help.

I can't recall, but I believe it was around noon when I found myself sitting in the emergency room at the hospital to get my wrist looked at as the pain and swelling were going nowhere fast, except to get worse. I'm stubborn or I'd have been there sooner. If I'd not called my mother, I'd probably not have had it checked out for a few days and might even have tried working, which would have promptly failled. My penchant for being stubborn kept me from taking anything while I waited, prefering to be fully capable of feeling and measuring the pain while it was looked at. I was seen nearly 12 hours after I had injured myself.

The next thing I found, which I already knew, but had never been able to compare all in one treatment, are the different ways in which you are treated. You are faced with someone who is coldly clinical, someone who is over sympathetic, or someone who knows what it feels like and wants to make it as easy for you as possible. I have dealt with many of these varrying personalities in the time I've spent trying to heal, and not all of them to do with this injury, but with older injuries. The most point blank display of this was in the x-ray technician who manipulated my wrist into the positions she wanted for x-ray upon seeing how slowly I was comfortably moving. I quickly lost count of how many times I whimpered in pain, bit my tongue, or saw stars. Then another tech came in to x-ray my elbow, taking shots out of sequence to minimize how much I had to move and letting me do the majority of the work rather than trying to twist my arm for me, all the while apologizing profusely every time I so much as winced. I'd gone from one extreme to the other. In all of this, I found the most comfortable environment is with a professional who is not so clinical and who is not over-sympathetic, but who is somewhere in the middle; doing what they can to make it easier and more comfortable for you, asking if there is anything they can help you with. Unfortunately, those are rare and I've only encountered two who pulled it off perfectly. My old doctor, Dr. Paddon and the woman who put me through the bone scan for my hip. Another thing I liked about her was that she said she had her students raise their arms the way they ask us to so that they know what it is we are feeling. It gives me some measure of hope that there will be more people like her in the profession. Perhaps if there were more like those two and less like my current doctor and the x-ray technician who looked at my wrist, people would be a little less inclined to avoid doctors.

After the x-rays, it was back to the waiting room. Eventually, I was seen by a doctor and told that the only anomally on the x-rays that the radiologist was concerned about was with my elbow. One thing that bothered me was how vaguely the doctor answered any questions I, or my mother, asked. What I got from it was that my elbow bone was bruised, but that it did not require a cast and that I should try bending and straightening it after a couple days to avoid stiffness. Despite my wrist showing the classical swelling and bruising of a break, not to mention having 90% of the pain and impossibility moving it, I had only badly sprained it. I was put in a splint and given a flimsy cheesecloth sling that couldn't hold the weight of my arm and keep it straight without my constant tugging it back into place and told that I should try taking the splint off and moving my wrist to avoid the same stiffness after 4 or 5 days. The doctor suggested that I do this by removing the splint overnight and directed me to otherwise not use my right arm for 1 week, after which I was to go see my doctor for a check-up.

The next discovery was seeing just how ill-informed my place of employment is as I was getting conflicting information from management. Adding to what I already knew of our current management through my little dealings with them and through observing what others went through dealing with them, I was rather taken aback when I was asked if I could still go to work out of town after I had informed them of the ER doctor's directions.

Following directions, I took the splint off after four days, on March 10th, and attempted to move my wrist very carefully without using my left to manipulate it. The result was so much pain my vision blacked out and I started feeling really sick. And so I looked at filing for Employment Insurance so that I could get some money coming in to make sure that I would continue to be able to pay my bills and put food on my table if things took longer than anticipated. Doing so told me that I needed to request my Record of Employment from my employer, which I promptly did. My boss told me that he wouldn't change my status or request the ROE until I had my check-up and that if I did not have confirmation before Friday March 14th, I would have to wait another 2-3 weeks for this change to take place. Odd.... Meanwhile, I was playing phone tag with my doctor's office and told that he was out of town and I could either see him in walk-in on the 18th or wait until the 27th to see him. The very next morning, that same office called my mom to set up an appointment for the very days I'd been trying to get in myself. My doctor has proven very difficult to deal with and not very competent and helpful when you actually do get to see him, but this took the cake. Unfortunately, things here are such that if you already have a doctor, you may not go and get a new doctor if there are any accepting patients because too many people in the city have no doctor. It does not matter in the least that most express the opinion that they do not want a doctor. And so, I am forced to keep the one I have and rely on walk-in clinics should I want better treatment than that I have experienced with him.

I went to the clinic with my mother in the hopes to see my doctor through the walk-in or get squeezed in with her as he will sometimes do. They had closed the clinic early and refused to open it for the last half hour despite there being only 3 people waiting and my doctor was supposedly double booked. Needing to see a doctor, we went on a hunt for another clinic after my mother was done with her appointment considering my apparent deadline the next day. I was seen in relatively short order by a very pleasant woman and asked to remove my splint and try moving my wrist so she could see the range of movement. At this point, I had a little and the benefit of stopping as soon as I felt a spike in pain. I was given a prescription of more anti-inflamatories and told not to use it for 2 weeks. She also suggested that I try replacing the splint with a brace for added comfort. A suggestion I jumped on, but knew I was in too much pain to try for at least half a week. So, I bit through the pain as I fired off a message to my boss and ran around town to fill my prescription and buy some braces.

On March 20th, I sent another message to my boss, enquiring about my ROE as it had still not arrived, despite the fact that another pay period had passed. Despite the passage of time, I was as dubious over my check-up as I had been about the prognosis at the ER as the swelling in my wrist and hand had not gone back down since the check-up and neither had the increased pain. Had I been less stubborn and less busy with appointments, be they medical or social, I would have, and should have, gone to see another doctor and had more x-rays done. I'm sure that the bone scan I had scheduled for the 18th did nothing to help decrease the swelling and pain as I had to put on and remove a pair of pants 6 times that day and jostled my arm around many other ways to get through the test. While not quick at getting things done, my boss is at least quick in his replies and assured me that my ROE should be on it's way, but that I may get it the following week due to the Easter holiday and that I should notify him if I still did not have it by the end of the following week; this week.

Had I been able to work, I would have had my pay deposited into my bank account at midnight on Wednesday or Thursday. Being unable to work, I have nothing coming in. As my ROE has still failed to materialize, I do not even know when I can apply to have EI supplement my pay and ensure that I remain able to pay my bills and put food on my table. By all appearances, I will be forced to go downtown to file for EI and have the government force my employer to relinquish my ROE. Trouble I really hoped to avoid going through. It has been nearly one month since I fell. Nearly one month since I have been capable of using my right arm. Nearly one month since I have been able to earn a living. Nearly one month and still no idea when I will be able to work again.

Now, on the 22nd, I had myself in a brace. My fingers needed a lot of slow movement to stretch out the muscles, but I had to settle for massage mostly because the little movement sent pain spiking through my wrist and partway up my arm. Using it was out of the question. But I was able, for the first time, to leave the brace on without any more pain than I experienced in the splint. Until Monday night when I had to take out the trash. Try as I might, I have not figured out how to tie a bag without using the fingers of my right to hold one half steady so that I can tie with the left. It didn't help that my landlord had filled my recycle bin up so that it was both too full and too heavy for me to lift with just my left so that I needed my right to lift it high enough to prop on my hip. I was confused by the feeling of something, yet again, seeming to move painfully in my wrist and was back in the splint as soon as I could get help getting it on.

Thursday, I followed the advice of an old friend I had run into, who looks a lot like the new boss we got in our office, and went to yet another clinic that had an x-ray lab attached. Again, I was seen in relatively short order and met with very friendly faces. I also had the bemusing, and very pleasant, first-time experiebce of being treated by a doctor who sang softly as he worked. In about two and a half hours, I was in, x-rayed, treated, filled a prescription and on the way home, feeling as though I had received much better care and more competent care, than any other doctor I had seen for this injury. It turns out that my wrist had been fractured. Whether or not it is also sprained, I do not know, but, for the first time, I had been told that I most definitely broke it. Lucky for me, it did not appear to be a complete break and seemed to still be in place, so nothing had to be rebroken and set. I was then given the choice between keeping the splint on, or having my arm casted. A quick discussion over the inadequacy of a molded splint held in place by a tensor wrap saw me being wrapped in plaster. The relief in the joint was nearly immediate after the plaster was on and drying. The waves of pain are gone except for the occasional needle of pain when I have my wrist below heart level for too long. The current estimate is that it will be 4 additional weeks and I should be hearing from a clinic dealing specifically in breaks to this area for an appointment.

Saturday, I finally get a reply from my boss about my ROE. This time, my boss wants me to wait until Wednesday, at which point he will get in touch with head office to track it down. I'm sorry, what? I've been off work since March 6th and been trying to get my ROE since March 10th and you want me to wait longer before you do anything about it? Unfortunately, EI takes long enough as it is and I have bills to pay, never mind that I need to eat. What I should have done, I suppose, is go to EI as soon as I was put off the first time and gotten the ball rolling. Now I have to wait for Monday to get it rolling because I sure as hell am not going to wait for my employer to keep dragging it out until I get the okay to return to work. And that's assuming I get the okay before I run out of savings to pay my bills. Perhaps I wouldn't be so angry over this if it were the only way this company tells it's employees that they don't care and to bugger off. Sadly, it's only one of the many areas where they seem to walk a fine line with workplace legalities with less than a handful of cowokers exhibiting even professional courtesy; even less than that displaying respect of others and the belongings of others. My experience with this particular branch of the company keeps getting worse at a nearly exponential rate. I certainly did not expect to be faced with so much delay and hassle to get something the law says employees have a right to request at any time and the employer an obligation to provide.

What I have not yet figured out is how the fracture, which the doctor said was very clearly shown, was so completely missed. Is it due to the fact that they want to move through patients as quickly as possible in the ER and do not take the time to properly look at things? Was it a mix-up with another x-ray? Or did the swelling in my wrist hide it from view? I may never know the answer to that. I do know that I am rather shocked at having gone so long without knowing it was broken and that, by following the advice of the doctor, I may have set my healing back quite a while. It is somewhat disheartening, though not nearly so much as dealing with my employer through all of this has been. And all of this is because of a little slip on some black ice because the city does not take care of the sidewalks. Nor do homeowners bother with it. I often see them clearing the snow in front of their houses so that they do not need to trudge through the snow when the plows neglect to pass through, but only 2 houses along those first 5 blocks had bothered to throw salt on the icy sidewalks in a little one foot square. There is really nothing to be said about it. It has, however, lead to many discoveries and even more questions.