Hotspur.us

Just a brief update on my broken status.

Yes, I am still broken. But I am now plated and pinned together, which seems to be a good thing. I do not have a cast but rather a gauze pad with a bandage. I would like to point out that the bandage constantly slips around and needs adjusted. If I wrap it tight enough to keep it still, I can’t feel my arm. (sometimes that seems like a good thing…)

I was discharged at 6:30 a.m. Friday. You can only imagine my surprise. Especially since I was startled awake by the doctor who came to cut off the half cast. [Apparently they were dead serious about 48 hours of IV antibiotics - I started on them after surgery around 5 a.m. Wednesday.]

I spent a good bit of the time between then and now (Monday at 10 p.m.) passed out on the sofa.

Although when awake I was clearly surrounded by the things I love – Ping, my laptop and blackberry! And flowers – thanks family. They are lovely and the cats tell me they taste good too.

Physical therapy starts Wednesday. But of bigger news to me, I’m allowed to take a proper bath Tuesday provided  I try really hard to keep the wound dry.

Which brings me to this. I do not know what the owie looks like. I specifically requested each and every medical professional (as well as friend & family member) who took a gander to NOT SAY ANYTHING regarding the size, status or general grossness of the thing itself. And I am currently blissfully unaware.

For those of you who are curious, I’m including a shot of the clothes I was wearing on Tuesday when this all went down. While the mess is pretty bad, it is nothing compared to the stains on the shirt I used to wrap my arm as I drove home. Funny enough I used some Oxy Clean on the clothes hoping to at least salvage the riding pants. Let me tell you, Billy Mays does not lie – the outfit in this picture  is stain free!  The shirt used as a bandage is going to take a second treatment though. It was pretty bad and was left in the car for 5 days so the stain could bake in nice and good.

Thanks to a swift kick from a startled horse I found myself incarcerated at Ruby Memorial Hospital with a busted up arm. And by busted I mean broken.

After riding Villain, feeding and turning out the horses I headed home. I was no further than the Bunner Ridge VFD when a severe storm warning came across the radio. And that meant, as i looked at the thunder clouds gathering, that I was going to have to go back and bring in the horses. Which is pretty much when it all went down hill.

And this is more or less how my evening of June 2, 2009, went….

8:00 pm -  begin bringing horses in from storm

8:15 pm – kicked in forearm by Never, who runs off. Collect Never, get in car covered in dirt, horsehair, blood and rain

8:30 pm – barrel up I-79 in a driving rainstorm while bleeding all over car

8:35 pm – call chad tell him don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it looks but I need to go to Med Express

8:52 pm – arrive at Med Express dripping blood everywhere

9:00 pm-ish – X-rays confirm fracture. Shots (as is i wasn’t hurting enough) and sent to Ruby ER

9:30 pm-ish – stop at home on way to ER. put on clean pants, birkenstocks

9:35 pm-ish – arrive at ER where they are awaiting my arrival

9:35 pm – <gets a little hazy here> – find out i have an open fracture and need surgery; hang out in ER sending emails and texts about my current situation.

June 3, 2009 arrives while I sit on a gurney wearing a hospital gown and think about how ridiculois this situation is.

2:30 am – surgery to put plate and pins in arm

4:00 am – out of surgery and find out I’m incarcerated through June 5 so I can be pumped full of antibiotics

Day 1 Incarceration (June 3). I was not particularly delighted to find out that I’d be spending 48 hours in the hospital.

Day 2 Incarceration (June 4). After a good 9 hours of morphine induced sleep and accompanied by Ping, my blackberries and my trusty laptop I settled in to wait.

recently i had a chance to play WV tour guide for one of my new cousins [new in the sense that she married into the family 2 years ago.

We had a short period of time so went with a brief tour of Coopers Rock starting with the overlook and ending with a hike to Rock City via the Henry Clay Iron Furnace.

Coopers has always been impressive to me, you may imagine how it impressed a native of the very flat mid-west.

Continue Reading »