Tuesday, 23 September 2003 | Accident, part 3

Regaining consciousness felt something like coming up for air after being knocked down by a wave. I'd been told that some people sit upright as soon as they resurface, and that some wrongly assume they haven't yet had surgery. As soon as I opened my eyes, or perhaps just before I opened them, I remembered where I was, and I knew that it was over. I didn't sit up, but it's possible I was still strapped down.

The faces bent over my stretcher had teal paper rectangles for foreheads and goggles for eyes. They were wheeling me around the building—in circles, for all I knew. I could barely speak, but I tried to tell them about my elbow, and how it was silently screaming at me—the skin angry that it had been sliced open, the bones angry that they'd been drilled and screwed. "Hurts," I could hear my weak voice murmur. I shut my eyes tight, eventually lifting my good arm a few inches off the stretcher (up and down, up and down) in hopes of getting someone's attention. After what felt like an unsuccessful eternity, I opened my eyes, looked around, and realized that no one was there at all.

Morphine. Percocet. Morphine. Percocet. Drifting in and out of sleep, a nurse to my right morphed into Martin, into Scott, and back into Martin. My elbow slowly took control of its temper, watering down its raging anger to a more tolerable pissed off. It liked the drugs; my legs, however, completely forgot who they were. I rode in a wheelchair to the front of the hospital. Fifteen minutes and one taxi altercation, we were in the yellow chariot. I got home almost exactly 12 hours after having left.

So it seems flipping over handlebars, sanding and chipping your teeth, bloodying your face, and breaking your elbow in three places is considerably less painful than having the king's horses and men put you back together again. Today is the first day since the surgery that I've felt at all close to normal, "normal" meaning "on codeine, but alive, pretty sober, and able to leave the house for multiple hours." (Comparatively, four days after the actual accident, I tried going to work.)

Currently: I drop a large percentage of the items I try to hold; they flutter to the ground or spill all over the floor, upon which I'm usually told I should've asked for help. (I am tired of asking for help.) I have a new sling, which I like to call my "fashion sling." My old sling was a makeshift sling, nothing but a piece of cloth tied to itself. This is my new x-ray. I can put on my own socks, make a soy dog by myself, and my left hand no longer acts like a first-time computer user when it cups the mouse. (I won't bother listing the things I can't do.) My face has completely healed, except for a tiny bit of remaining embedded gravel. My front teeth have almost stopped painfully humming, although they still aren't much use for eating. My cat is miraculously no longer diabetic (unrelated, but still). And tomorrow my cast comes off. I'm not sure why my doctor thinks that's a good idea, but I guess I'm okay with it.