The fall

I fell and went boom.

My appointment at BOSS Orthopedics on April 16 was at 11 a.m., and with 15 minutes to spare, I backed into a parking space opposite their front door.

For the past couple of months, I had been on the receiving end of their expertise as physical therapist Scott managed to get my left hip back into place after I had jammed it out of whack.

At the last minute, I decided to give him a copy of my book, “Et Cetera, Y’all.”

Wasn’t one on the back seat.

I walked around the back of the car to check the trunk.

My right foot cleared the concrete curb, my left foot caught the top, and I went down, sprawled out like a Marine seeking cover under enemy fire.

What happened next was a nightmare.

Some things I don’t remember.

Some things I remember too well.

Emergency room care for nine hours. Admitted for two nights.

Transfer to Encompass Rehab Hospital for nine nights.

Home for one night.

Then to a Savannah Hospital and a 25-hour wait in the emergency room hallway before another nine days of hospital care.

Back to Encompass.

Home on May 19.

My introduction to gurneys and medics wearing white uniforms, soundless sneakers, walking past me with set, unseeing faces; groans from incoming patients; screams; police bringing in wounded drunks and druggies; being moved to another gurney and pushed down hallways and moved to another room, another wait.

I don’t know what they did to me.

I remember someone named Holly coming to get me and pushing me down a long ground-level corridor with windows on one side. She called for someone to help move me from the gurney to an enormous tunnel of a machine that swallowed my bottom half as I lay stupidly supine, arms folded over my chest, ready for the coffin.

Transferred back to the gurney, Holly took me through doors with coded entrance locks back to my hallway ER home.

“One, two, three” meant I was on a slip cloth and being moved from one gurney to another.

Did I know what they were doing?

No.

But they saved my life, and for that I am most thankful.

My pelvis was broken, busted in two places on the right side. A lump the size of a grapefruit appeared, trailed by a purplish-blue bruise.

That was the second week of April.

I write this in the first week of June.

Such a short time, really, but my life is forever changed.

Two sojourns at Encompass Therapy.

Went home too soon after the first episode.

Second go-round, back in the training room with fellow patients working to overcome so many different physical problems.

How could I feel sorry for myself when I had all my limbs still attached and others were missing a leg or foot, hobbling on crutches?

I pushed my walker around the exercise room’s perimeter, practiced getting into and out of a vehicle model, pedaled a stationary bike, climbed three steps and back down again.

Who knew how difficult it was to use the loo, to shower, to move from one place to another?

And the pain.

After just a few days, I refused to take any medication other than Tylenol.

I have a high threshold for pain.

But one night in the wee small hours, the awfulness of it all got to me, the never-ending pain.

I broke down and cried, sobbing and mumbling incoherently in the dark room.

And from the hallway came Kim, who held me and comforted me.
She and her husband, Riz, were my mainstays.

I’m better now.

The hip lump is more like a splattered egg, but the bruising is still there and sore to the touch.

I walk with a cane, carefully and with an awkward lurch.

If we’re going any distance, I’m not averse to being pushed in a wheelchair.

My Pepto-Bismol pink egg-crate pad goes with me everywhere.

My balance is iffy.

Am I back to my “old self”?

No.

But I do believe there is a purpose to what happened to me. God works in mysterious ways.

My advice:

Break a leg. Break a promise. Break some hearts.

But do not ever break your pelvis.