Do you ever find sometime you’ll be going along pretty good in life, you know things are just chugging along great, and then something happens that lands you on your butt?
Well that happened to me last month. Literally and figuratively! I was unloading groceries from the car when I slipped on the ice and down I went. I landed on my butt, but not before putting my hand out to try to stop my fall.
After the initial embarrassment and giving a sheepish grin to the guy driving by slowly checking me out, I noticed the pain in my right wrist. Ouch! Great, I thought! I sprained my wrist! That’s just perfect!! It’s my dominant hand (of course it is!), and it’s our fiscal year end this month, I have a grant application and a budget due, and how am I going to do all of that with a sprained wrist?!
All that went through my head in a few seconds. My wrist was really hurting! I was at my Mom’s place when this happened and she is also an oiler, so I went in to see what I could put on my wrist to ease the pain until I could get home to ice it.
She had Lavender and Cloves, so I put both on. Thankfully, Billy, my husband, was there so he drove. I insisted that I didn’t need to go to the hospital, that it was likely just a sprain. I just needed to put some ice on it and it would be fine in a couple of days.
So we headed down the highway to our place, Billy looking concerned and me grimacing in pain, trying to breathe through it, and holding my arm.
We got about halfway there when I started feeling like I was going to pass out. “Maybe we should go back into town and go to the ER”, I said. “I don’t feel so good.”
So, back we went. By this time, it’s about 6 pm, and in a small town hospital, that means the X-ray technician is gone home already. Billy grabbed a bag of frozen vegetables out of the car and I held that on my arm while I waited. The doctor saw me, checked out my wrist, and figured it was probably a sprain. She wrapped it and told me to come back in the morning for an X-ray, just to be sure.
So the next day, Billy dropped me off at the hospital, I got the X-rays done, and waited to see the doctor on-call that day. And sure enough, he came in and told me he was pretty sure I had a hairline fracture. “What? You’re kidding! I’ve never broken anything in my life!”
Doc says, “Yeah, we’re pretty sure. A couple of us looked at it, and we can see what looks to be a break. But if you want, we can wait for the Radiologist to read it.”
At this point, my head is spinning, and I’m starting to panic. We had just booked a holiday, someplace warm, on a beach! I don’t want to have to wear a cast! In my head, I’m thinking, “what does this guy know? He’s not a radiologist! My arm can’t be broken.”
Now, the doctor was great, and trying to give me some options, he could put the cast on, and if it turns out it’s not broken, they can just take it off next week. Or he could give me a prescription for a brace that I can wear until we hear back from the radiologist. (Again, small town hospital, so no radiologist on site)
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, I just knew I really didn’t want my arm to be broken. And I was trying to “will it” not to be broken. (Have I mentioned that I’m a bit of a control freak? Haha!)
Anyway, finally the doctor decides to just call the radiologist, and sure enough, the damn thing is broken!
So, fine. I have a broken arm. It’s not the end of the world, right? Could have been worse. Of course these are the things you tell yourself to help you feel better. And they are true. But you know what’s also true? Having a broken arm sucks!
Having to figure out how to do everything with your left hand is a pain in the butt! But it’s also teaching me some lessons. I’m trying to slow down. I’m learning to be patient with myself, and I’m finding out how resilient I am. I’m even more grateful for my loving husband, and my caring family. (Thank you to my sister and my Mom for sending me meals and baked goodies!)
I’m also really grateful to my work family for their care and support, and to my Northern Lights Oily Family for understanding when I had to cancel events I had planned last month.
Sometimes life just throws you a curveball, and there’s nothing you can do but to deal with it the best way you can, and thank your lucky stars for all the blessings you have in your life, because there are so many!
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