I fractured my right ankle last Tuesday night. I went out for a walk around the block after dinner, before it got dark and stepped sideways on some pebbles on a conceptual sidewalk (an inside $18 million dollar joke) and when I did heard/felt it give way, I knew I was screwed. I hobbled home after scaring my wife by calling her on my cellphone and not being able to hear her, while she could hear me. She had no idea where I was but knew I was in trouble. and when I finally did get home, I was in more.
I couldn't get to my orthopedic practice that next day (yes, I've had enough work done I qualify for my own practice; heck with pony rides, woot!) but they squeezed me in. I hadn't brushed up on my French and I feared my doctor might check me into the boards, but she is very kind. She made no mention of two years ago when I broke the same foot about how I stood her up for the last examination and simply went back to to my life once the initial diagnosis was made (and I had the clunkiest boot in Creation to wear for months that I really didn't).
In less than an hour, from the time I had signed in (I was my doctor's last patient-technically, the patient after her last one) I was getting fitted with a Curt Shilling sleeve, as I call it, and resisting the temptation to offer to drive Bobby Valentine to Logan and feed him to a US Air 767 intake. What I did do, instead, was the fault of the Imp of the Perverse.
The doctor had advised me that a fracture can be painful while healing and offered to write a prescription for a pain killer-I have a well-known reputation as having a high threshold of pain, of other people's pain (mine, not so much). I'm also weak-willed and the road to perdition in my case is an interstate so I heard myself assure her I would be fine. I knew as I said the words that it was a lie. I know me too well.
I started popping Ibuprofen and acetaminophen within an hour of coming home like they were Tic Tacs because the doctor was right, it did hurt. When the nurse assigned by my insurance company gave me a HUGE lecture Wednesday afternoon on the phone about telling my doctors about the pain, I decided to come clean with my primary care physician whom I was seeing on my birthday, Thursday, and ask for help in the pain management department.
He knew it was my birthday and he's a normally a pretty good guy, but Thursday there were no big shoes, no squirting flower or red nose.I never saw a bucket full of confetti as requested and as for tooling around the parking lot in a clown car, not a chance. It may have had something to do with the wicked cold he was nursing (makes sense-you don't see two dozen or more sick (one form of another) people every day and not catch something) or the fact that he has a whackadoodle for a patient.
He wrote me a prescription for a light pain reliever (I've never understood that-why not go MAX VOL and be done with it; instead, 'no thanks, just a little something to take the edge off, but leave the deep seated pain, thanks') and I called my orthopedist and left a message confessing I was the wimp we both know I am. I figure she's already counting down the days to July when I don't come back in for the follow-up. I am, if nothing else, consistent et incroyablement têtu et stupide.
-bill kenny
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