New Years Day, it had rained a bunch, we had all been stuck inside because of covid and pneumonia and I thought okay yeah lets get the horses out from knee deep in mud, to the arena. I almost left the little pony because I didn't have the energy for nutballs but he was so eager to go.
So Kurt ponies Maggie and I'm walking Dewey and Stupidpants because he's so frolicky the first five minutes of our walk always. I wrestle him back once and then he just leaps forward with the joy of life, a dolphin in the open sea, and he flings his back legs skyward right at my left hand which is up, apparently waving goodbye to my formerly easy life. Whack goes the hoof.
I am cussing and ripping off my glove cause I know hand surgery and I'm pissed and Kurt's turning around and saying you ok and I'm yelling I'm so stupid!
I can't do it!!
My mom all these months and a stupid pony and now my hand bent weird I know what that means so I'm yelling and grabbing horses angrily and Christmas was covid ruined from covid and b home in bed sick and Bruce left as fast as he could and I shove all the horses back at home in the mud and go inside and yell I broke my hand I gotta go to the emergency room and people look up at me from the couch and Emma says want me to drive you and I'm grabbing stuff
no I can do it
I get ice water and a book and get to the car and my battery is dead
back in the house I say ok you can drive me
she's in her pjs and a tshirt in winter and we drive while I get madder and clutch my ice water w my swelling hand which has decided it's time to hurt now and I tell her I'm so stupid why can't I learn things without hospitals
we get the last parking space wedged beside a forlorn ambulance and inside the world is still masked how is this still the world, I am still not over it
even though there are like 20 people there I get called in in like five minutes. The radiologist practically skips over to me because he's so excited to use his xray machine, he's so unnecessary everyone else is there for covid, he's bored and lonely
He angles my fingers and takes I'm assuming award winning shots of my gnarled hand while silent tears roll down my face as I see what I've done to my poor drooping pinky. It's his masterpiece and he says can you lift your pinky right to there and I cry because I can't if I could do that I wouldn't be in here maybe you want me to carry some luggage for you too
I finally get called in to the back sharing a room with let's call her brain bleed, and listening to her one sided conversation about driving the little streets in their cute british car with no seatbelts until someone crashed into them and now her new years includes not so acute head trauma. I look at my hand pretty happy with my 20% displaced finger bone fracture.
I text my kids that I'm just waiting for ortho and Nathan writes back cool you get braces
The ortho decides not to wreck his new year's day to come down and fix my fuck up so they wrap up my hand, take a covid swab, tell me to go to ortho on Monday. I get to walk out with my daughter while brain bleed has to go by ambulance to the one open hospital bed in the city not occupied by covid.
it's possible to feel shitty, angry and lucky
I get home in the dark to my dementia mom in a chair with a code brown. Pneumonia med seems to have caused a diarrhea upflow in a chair that doesn't recline and all 3 of my kids are standing around me in the saddest circle Christmas ever made.
Lilly gets the wet washcloths, Emma helps Nathan hold her up, my club hand in the air as we wipe, cut off her shirt, carefully manage the overflow, wipe, wipe, throw away, redress, get her in her rolly chair and into bed.
No more lifting for 3 mos.
The hard part is, I play with the horses to escape my life. The fun thing can't cause the problems, that's what the problems are for.
Now some of the problems are how to get the hair clip in my hair and how the eff do you deodorant under the same arm you hold the deodorant in.
Also mucking the horses one handed in mud. And changing a diaper one handed on a bedbound patient. Oh and then testing positive for covid myself.
At the ortho Monday they tell me I can have surgery or just let it heal in a cast. The doc says if I want to play on the Lakers I should do surgery. Otherwise the bone will heal and function with just a cast.
I pick a cast.
At night I worry I've let down the Lakers. Also I worry about my hand. I work way harder than the Lakers. I wiggle my finger in my cast to make sure he knows he's not forgotten and will be required soon. Finger cocoon.
Leaving the ortho I got in the elevator with a lanky kid in his 20s with a motorcycle helmet and a limp.
What happened to you I say. Car hit him on his motorcycle. Knee and back and elbow injuries. Not recently. Back in August. He's 6 months in.
We limp toward the parking garage.
Thank you brain bleed and motorcycle elevator guy.
I have a stupid cast, just like Jimmy Stewart at the end of It's a Wonderful Life he gets back home to his family after thinking he lost his family on Christmas Eve and the police waiting for him cause he owes money and he says I know I know you have a warrant for my arrest, isn't it wonderful?!
