Personal Injury

Sunday mornings, there's no DJ who mans the radio stations.  It's all run via computer software and in the course of playing music for the first few hours, the station will repeat some of the segments that other DJs had produced throughout the week.  One of the subject matters covered this week, people who wished they had a more interesting story as to why they sustained an injury.  Right away, I recalled the day I tore my bicep and the harrowing details that followed.

PART ONE: THE INJURY

I had been off of work prior to this injury, due to..., what else?  An injury.  I had a traffic accident that had resulted in a serious back injury which required months and months of rehabilitation.  I'd returned to work only weeks before this event occurred.

I worked nights at a local retail establishment and in the mornings, before we were set to depart for the day, we'd perform a thorough clean up of discarded packaging and other refuse.  We had put a stand up air compressor out that night and had an empty box, which we had filled part way with plastic wrap and other shit.  It didn't weigh very much at all, but when I picked the box up to place onto a flatbed cart, I felt something snap inside my arm.  It took me by surprise and as I recall, I scurried backwards into the racking, holding my arm with my free hand.

I'd be lying if I said it hurt a lot, because to be honest, it actually kinda felt cool, but it's definitely not something I wish to repeat.  It felt like an unraveling, which in actuality, it is.  I recall the blinds that my great-aunt, Chrissie, had at her house.  As a child, we weren't allowed to adjust the height of them because, I'm guessing, at some point, one of us idiot kids, tugged on the blind and let it go, sending it skyrocketing to the top of the window, thus requiring a tall ladder to scale to retrieve and return to the lower portion of the window.  If you've experienced this, you'd be familiar with the thwap-thwap-thwap sound the blind makes as it reaches the top.  This is exactly how my arm felt.

I knew right away what I had done to myself and when work was finished, instead of heading home for some much needed rest, I instead found myself in the waiting room the the University Hospital.

PART TWO: A QUESTIONABLE DIAGNOSIS

The case was performed by medical interns, who first sent me for X-rays, which proved inconclusive, so they followed up by performing an ultrasound on my arm.

The whole time, I was insisting that I had torn the bicep, explaining that I felt it unravel inside my arm, but they weren't having any of that.  They kept forcing their belief that I would be in a world of torturous pain if I had, indeed, torn the muscle from the bone.

I insisted that pain is only a figment of the imagination.  It's fear-based and most of those who experience pain, manifest it solely because of a fear of the unknown.  Like, "Holy shit! What did I do to my arm?" kind of bullshit.  This was not the case, here.  I firmly held my ground, insisting that this was the reality.  The young know-it-alls would not succumb to my claims.

The ultrasound proved as inconclusive as the X-rays were.  It was at this time that the surgeon popped in for a consult.  The interns, having fun at my expense, tried to get the doctor in on the teasing.  "He claims that pain is fear-based and because he 'knows' what he did, he's not feeling any pain." 

I recall the doctor pausing, leaning his head from left to right, then replied, "Yes.  That sounds reasonable."  Suddenly, the room got quiet, the physician leaning in between two of the three young docs, his eyes fixed on the video feedback on the monitor.

"It's difficult to see just how bad the damage is.  We'll have to open it up to get a good look."

Long story short (too late 😉), the surgeon pulled me aside the day after the surgery and reported to me with a huge smile smeared across his face.  "Yep!  You tore that sucker clean off the bone!"  He slapped my knee, continuing the tale with a chuckle in his voice, "It was beautiful.  You couldn't have torn it more perfectly."

He went on the explain that normally when someone tears the tendon, it looks like a bomb went off, but in my case, the tendon had torn right at the bottom most portion.  He told me all they had to do was trim some of the shredded portion off then they pulled the tendon down through the two bones of my forearm, then attached the tendon to the back of the Humerus bone of my upper arm.  Because so little of the tendon had to be removed, he speculated that I should reclaim full use of the arm.

I've seen people who suffered a much worse injury than mine, who were left with a semi-crooked arm.  They can never extend their arm fully, whereas myself, I can.

PART THREE: THE AFTERMATH

Immediately following my meeting with the surgeon, I was fitted for an odd looking apparatus that was designed to hold my arm in a certain position to better the healing process.  Hold it in a manner where full movement would not be an issue in the future.

The apparatus was odd.  It had a cuff that clipped to my upper arm, with a hard immoveable cable attached to the lower portion which kept my arm twisted so the inside of my arm would face upward.  It was quite cumbersome and it was difficult to wear a jacket.  This, of course, occurred in late-November, early-December, when it's necessary to wear a heavy coat.  With this contraption strapped to my arm, I couldn't hardly zip the jacket up, which made me appear to be quite the attraction.

Of course everyone is going to ask what happened to me.  You couldn't look at the pathetic nature of my appearance without wondering, "WTF?!"

The truth, which I shared with you at the top of this page, was boring and lackluster, so I embellished it some.  Embellish isn't really the correct term, but exaggeration is completely accurate. 😂

On one particular evening, I was with my best bud, my brotha-from-anotha-motha, at a local drinking establishment.  Actually, it was the one and only bar in the town of Delisle, where Dan had been living with his family.  Prior to this date, we'd partied in that bar a few times.  It was especially fun when they'd have karaoke.  I admit that I can't clearly recall any of those prior visits due to high alcohol consumption, but on this day, I don't believe I was drinking.  The last thing I'd wanna do is fall down and reinjure my arm.

The waitress came over to see if we'd like another beverage, when she noticed the contrivance strapped to my arm and immediately asked what had happened.  The truth being a snooze-fest, I changed the story to the one I had been repeating to everyone I had been encountering up to that point.

PART FOUR: THE STORY

I told her that I was walking downtown when I heard a woman scream, "Stop him! He has my purse!"  I looked ahead of me, where I noticed the woman screaming for help.  Between her and me, was this fellow running through the crowded sidewalk.  Being a fan of pro wrestling, I knew straight away that I could remedy this situation quick and as the man was about to run past me, I extended my left arm, throwing it into the man, forcing him to the ground.

The waitress was enthralled, leaning in, mouth open and hanging on my every word.

"Right away," I told the server, "I knew that I had torn something in my arm when I clotheslined that thief."  

The waitress leaned back, muttering "Holy shit!"

Enjoying the ridiculous reaction I was getting, I added the tagline, "They wrote a story about it in the Sunday Sun.  I believe they called it, "Local Samaritan Saves Christmas For Out-of-Town Shopper".

"I'm going to go home and check that out." she said, before returning to the bar with our order.

"Why'd you tell her that?" Dan asked me, "Why'd you tell her about the article.  People out here don't throw anything away.  She's going to go home and search through every damned paper looking for the story you just told and she's never going to find it."

PART FIVE: THE EPILOGUE

I couldn't call into the radio station to tell them this incredible, albeit, made up story, but perhaps the subject will come up again, one day, and I will be able to call in and share some of my silliness.

Poor AJ Styles, clothesline by John Cena.

Fabrication

A number of years ago, I suffered an injury to my left arm.  One morning, while tending to some work stuff, a task I'd repeated every morning for countless years.  It was a part of my routine, when suddenly I felt a snap in my left arm and I could feel my bicep unraveling within the arm.  It felt exactly like a window shade when it's accidentally let go and it flies up to the roll, making a flapping sound at the end. Fwap! Fwap! Fwap!  I never heard any sound, obviously, then again, it was November and I was wearing a heavy jacket.

As an avid viewer of professional wrestling, I knew almost immediately what I had done.  It was obvious to me that my left bicep had ruptured and had retracted up into my upper arm.  Then, when I removed the heavy coat, I saw that my bicep had done just that.  I knew that my morning was not going to be my going straight home to sleep after my graveyard shift, but that I would be making a trek to the Emergency Room.

I can't recall how long of a wait I had before getting in to see doctors, but I do recall that every medical practitioner I interacted with claimed, without examination, that I had merely strained the muscle because if I had torn it, I'd be in much more pain.

I've always harboured a theory that fear drives pain.  That fear of the unknown, is what comprises a majority of pain.  Granted, if you stub your toe or have a limb torn off in some kind of violent farming accident or whatever else we human beings get ourselves wrapped up in, you're going to feel pain.  However, in this instance, because I knew first hand what I had done to myself, there was discomfort, but little pain.

Among the tests performed on me that day, was an ultrasound.  I laid back on a gurney as three young medical students moved the probe over my arm.  During this time, my insistence that the injury was a torn bicep, I kept getting rejected.  That my claims were stupid and misinformed.  "No way!" the lead insisted, "You'd be in intense pain if you tore the bicep."

Just as the young doctor-to-be finished that sentence, the surgeon came inside the darkened room that was lit only by the computer screen.  The surgeon asked how everyone was and before I could utter a single word, the young doctor at the helm of the Ultrasound Machine, piped up, laughing while he delivered his response., "He thinks that fear causes pain and because he thinks he knows what the injury is, is why he doesn't feel any pain."  I remember the whole room going silent, waiting for the surgeon to support them and laugh off my claims.  Instead, he shrugged his shoulders and replied, "Sounds about right to me."

The trio of young doctors, two males and a female, lost all expression from their faces.  They'd just been schooled by the patient, me, and confirmed by the surgeon.  He scooched in between the doctors manning the Ultrasound, the light reflecting off his face.  I saw a middle-aged man with curly salt and pepper hair, wearing a bowtie.  I can't recall what his name was, as he introduced himself, but I do remember that his first name was Jeffrey, so I knew I was in good hands.

He confirmed that the ultrasound was inconclusive and that he'd likely have to do surgery to confirm the extent of the injury, but in examining my left arm from the outside, it was at best not torn all the way through, but in all likelihood, from the description I told about the unravelling feeling, that I had probably tore bicep.

The surgery was on December 4th, my late-father's birthday, so I knew I was going to be okay, and the next day, following the surgery, I had a chance to sit down with the surgeon to discuss what he'd found.  He explained that I had, indeed, tore the bicep, further explaining that it was a perfect tear.

Apparently, the tendon not only tore at the bottom of the bicep, but it had done so almost cleanly.  The doctor explained that he only had to trim a small portion of the end, before looping it through the two bones in my forearm to reattach the tendon on the underside of the bone.  Because such a small portion was necessary for removal, that I would most likely have full range of my arm when it healed.

It's very true.  In the decades since that injury (I can't believe it's been close to twenty years since that had happened), I have had full range of my left arm.  It's not nearly as strong, but I'm right-handed and the left always was a weak duckling, so no big deal.

The contraption I had to wear after surgery, to ensure the repair would heal properly, was insane and overly bulky.  The injury and surgery both occurred in the winter months so putting on and wearing a jacket was near impossible for a one-armed man, but I did manage to get out once in awhile, always being met with questions and queries.  The real reason behind the injury was stupid and uninteresting, so I came up with a much more interesting and entertaining reason behind the injury.

One time in January, a little over a month after my surgery, I was visiting a friend who lived in a small town outside Saskatoon.  We were conversing at a small table in the bar, when the waitress/bar maid came over to our table to ask if we wanted more to drink.  Seeing the contraption that my arm was twisted into, she asked what had happened, thus thrusting me into my tall tale.

I explained that I'd been downtown, doing Christmas shopping, when I heard a woman scream, "Stop him! He has my purse." I told the bar maid, that I snapped my head around toward the scream and saw a young fellow racing toward me, carrying the woman's purse.  Without hesitation, I explained, I immediately threw my arm out to clothesline the fella as he ran past.  I was successful in bringing down the assailant and retrieving the purse for the woman.

Looking up at the astonished look on the barkeep's face, I added a nugget that I never thought meant anything, claiming that there was a write-up about it in the Sunday Sun, which was a local newspaper for the City of Saskatoon, at the time, adding the title, "Local Samaritan Saves Christmas for Out of Town Shopper".

She was flabbergasted.  Speechless, but impressed.  "I'm going to go home and look for that article." she said, turning around to go back to her post behind the bar.  My friend, whispered to me, "She's really going to do that, you know.  People around here keep all that shit, ya know."  I just shrugged it off and never came clean.  Not until this blog, anyway.

What had really happened was: When it was time to take the garbage out to the bins after working the nightshift, my bicep tore off the bone when I attempted to pick up a large container of garbage.  That's it!  Boring as shit!  Lies or not, that story needed embellishment and I think my cover story was brilliant.  What do y'all think?

Hopeless

Truth be told.  I should have written this last night, amidst one of the most intense feelings of dread and hopelessness.  If we're being totally honest, though, I was in no shape to be doing anything last night.

I can't describe it, but I've been feeling overwhelmed as of late with feelings of dire hopelessness.  I'm lost.  I am truly lost.  A castaway in a sea of possibility, yet I feel like I'm a million miles away.  I feel like I'm on an edge, afraid to look down.  Like I'm being needled forward, inch by inch, to ultimately fall into a pit of obscurity.

My mom recently told me that when she dies, she doesn't want a funeral.  Despite having so many friends, she believes no one would show up for her funeral.  This saddened me.  In part, because my mom feels this way and selfishly, perhaps, I think if she feels this way with all the friends she has, then no one's going to attend my funeral.  It's not that I don't have friends, but these days they seem more like acquaintances than definitive friends.  I mean, my phone's not ringing off it's hook.

Last night, I watched a documentary on Robin Williams.  For years, I found myself unable to forgive Williams for ending his own life by suicide.  There was no booze of drugs in his system, other than his prescription drugs, so his decision, by all accounts, was lucid, which makes the act even more sad.

Selfishly, I never truly understood his life.  What was going on in that brain of his.  Outside of all the crazy antics, I could see the shell of the man inside.  That the zaniness he displayed on the stage, never truly reflected the man he was inside.  In the documentary, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, the late comedian was often described as quiet whenever he was home, away from the glitz and glamour of show biz.  I think that was when Robin was truly himself, but speaking from my own experience, this isn't always a good thing.  If I'm out and about, I rarely think about myself or what's going on in my own shitty life.  It's when I'm home, alone, with my thoughts, that all hope escapes me and I feel truly lost.  No amount of TV, music or movies, what I used to rely on for escape, now leaves me feeling dejected.

Turns out that in addition to anxiety and depression, the late Oscar winner, was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson's Disease, as well as Lewy Body Dementia, which is believed to be a major contributor to his suicide.  Selfishly, given my thought processes as of late, I understand now, why the man felt suicide was his only choice, despite having such a strong base to lean on.  Last night, reliving some of those happy memories of Robin, I found myself forgiving him for exiting stage left.

I should have written this last night, when my mind was swimming in despondency.  With my cat, nestled up tightly against me, I still felt alone.  Feelings of dread and impending doom.  I can't explain why I'm feeling this way and I think my cat is feeling it too.  He knows something is afoot with his daddy, but doesn't know how to bring me out of this funk.

Depression is nothing new for me.  I've suffered Seasonal Depression for years.  It's only recently that I had discovered that cannabis can combat those dark feelings and the Seasonal Depression that threatened my very livelihood for the better part of my life, had gone by the wayside.  For the first time in literally decades, I was smiling and laughing my way through those darkened months sprawling from late-October to mid-April / early-May.  That is, until this year.  As much as I detested working at that RV company, being fired for absolutely no reason, really shook me.  I didn't mind being off of work for the winter, as I have a real phobia about snow and ice, but to be cast away, like vermin for no justifiable reason, simply blew my mind.  Maybe that's what blew the gasket to my sanity.

I'm in constant pain.  My ankles hurt SO much, that it often brings me to tears.  My hands are the same way.  A handful of times (pardon the pun), I've awoken abruptly as my hands, usually the right hand, my dominant hand, is cramping up into a ball.  The pain in unequal to anything I've ever experienced, and considering I've broken my back and squashed my brain, both immensely painful experiences, the pain I feel in my hands and ankles, rival those pain levels, if not more.  As a result, I've been relying on the cannabis for pain relief, as well.  I've gone to my physician on the matter.  She ran a series of blood tests and has informed me that I do not have arthritis.  When asked why everything hurts, she has no solution.  Only that I should stretch before bed.  Sorry doctor, but what the fuck?!?

These days, my ankles hurt 24/7.  Not a moment goes by where my feet don't hurt.  My hands hurt, but usually only when I grab something.  If I grab a jug of milk from the fridge, my right hand immediately cramps up.  My knees hurt.  My hips both hurt now, although the left is still worse, by far.  My back hurts, as does my neck and my fucking migraines have returned, although still not at the frequency they once did.  The only thing relatively good is my blood sugars.  Small victories?

I am without work.  For the past half decade, I haven't been working throughout the winter months.  At first it was because of my TBI, a traumatic brain injury that I'd gotten when I slipped on a patch of ice at work, knocking myself out for close to a half hour, which was the beginning of a life altered.  I've managed fairly well, I believe, to come out the other side of that accident, with only damage to my short-term and long-term memory.  The long-term comes back in spurts.  I'll see or hear or smell something that triggers a memory and no matter how miniscule it may be, I celebrate it.  My short-term memory is an ongoing problem.  It may have been a contributor to loss of employment from the RV job, as the morning of my dismissal, I found myself wandering around the parking lot, struggling to remember how to do the next task of my job.  I recall almost collapsing in tears.  Everyone is quick to dismiss these struggles as "getting old", but those people fail to see the scenario from my side of the proverbial fence.  I've always prided myself on my memory.  I was always able to remember even the most finite bits of information, but these days I can stop abruptly in the middle of a task being performed and not have a single clue as to what I am doing, nor why I'm doing it.  This is not a factor of getting old.  This is a real fucking problem.

I am without work.  I want to have something to do.  To have a purpose.  I want to have a job with the city.  To work in the park system, ideally, but I have my name in with some other departments, too.  The downside to this is, I know the city will likely demand a drug test prior to any employment, so it will be discovered that I have THC in my bloodstream.  I don't smoke in the morning or during the day, despite how painful my ankles get.  I smoke only in the evenings.  To help with pain management, depression, anxiety and to help me sleep.  However, in my research of the plant, I discovered that daily use, means the THC that is in the cannabis, stays in a person's system for a very long time.  I know not what the city's policy is on cannabis, since it's legalization.  The philosophy of many companies and people, even, casts a dark shadow on the misunderstood substance.  It's absurd.  A person could be a fall down drunk and it's acceptable, but if a person lights up a doobie, suddenly they're a liability and a menace.  Part of me thinks I should speak with my physician about it, but I've attempted to broach the subject with her many years ago.

A friend of mine, years ago, alerted me to acquiring a Medicinal Marijuana prescription.  They were using it to combat anxiety and other ailments.  I knew from my own experimentation, that cannabis helped me with my own battles with anxiety and depression.  It even helped my asthma, remarkably enough.  So I broached the idea with my doctor.  I had always seen my doctor as a forward thinking, try-anything kind of physician.  Hell, she's one of the top doctors in the city.  I'm often commended by other physicians for being so lucky as to have her as my personal physician.  So when I brought up the idea of getting a prescription for cannabis, the idea was shot down immediately and with extreme prejudice.  My doctor was not going to have any of that, citing that marijuana is a "gateway drug".  That is horse shit.  It's my own personal belief that if someone is going to try a hard drug like cocaine or worse, then they were going to do it anyway.  They didn't need an introduction to it by Mary Jane.

I wish I had a rock.  Someone to bounce ideas off of.  Not someone to solve my problems, but who'll be there for me.  To listen to me.  To hear me.  To...  I don't know.

My friend's kid found love on the interwebs.  He is or was a closed off individual.  I worked with him, side-by-side, and it was difficult to bring him out of his shell to even say hi, but somehow he found love on the interwebs. Perhaps I should do this?  Nah.  I'm too broken.  Physically.  Another contributor to my sorrow, me thinks.

I should have written this, last night.  My head racing with thoughts and disparity.  These days.  I am truly lost.  I don't know where to go.  What I should do.  I just want to curl up in a ball and disappear.

My cat, Monkey, is twelve years old.  I pray that he lives to be thirty, because the idea of living in this house without his fuzzy little face staring up at me, is unbearable.  I broke down into full on tears, last week, thinking about him, my cat, being in his twilight years.  My mom, who I've been spending a lot of time with, is seventy-five and talking about when she dies.  When they're both gone, I'm going to be truly alone.  No one to care the least about me.  It was the first time in a very long time where I thought suicide was a legitimate choice.  That without these two pivotal components of my life, I couldn't possibly move on.  This coupled with the fact that I'm susceptible to getting dementia or Alzheimer's Disease because of my multiple concussions.  I've had at least fifteen, to the best of my knowledge, if not more.  Three of which were fatal enough to knock me out and cause permanent damage.  My future looks bleak.  Bleak and alone.

There's no danger of my taking my life.  Not anytime soon, but when these loved ones make their exit...  I'm not a religious person, by any means, but I hope that whatever powers that be, can deliver me through what will likely be the darkest patch of my life.

I was thinking the other day.  Counting how many Christmas' I had left in my life.  How many more birthday's.  I don't have that many.  More than what can be counted on both hands, but less than the amount including my toes.

My feet hurt SO much, right now and I feel fucking helpless.

I should have written this last night.  I may have had a way to end this thought process.  To wrap it up with a neatly tied bow.  Maybe even talk myself into a solution.  A glimmer of hope.  End on a positive note, but I can't.  It's not in me.  It's nowhere to be found.  And will it matter?  Will anyone even read this?  Probably not.  Nobody gives a shit.  People just interject enough on social media to pat themselves on the back with the belief that they contributed.  That they cared, but...  My phone isn't ringing off the hook.

I'm surrounded by so many people, but I've never felt more alone. 😔

Greetings and Salutations!!

Back on October 24th, of this year, I had the misfortune of taking a nasty spill at work, and subsequently injured my left thigh region. The upper leg managed to swell up pretty bad, also resulting in excrutiating pain. It was pain like I'd never felt before, and that's saying a lot, considering how many muscle strains and tears I've endured over the years. The initial prognosis by my physician, was that it was a groin injury. Having never had one before, I had no reason to doubt that diagnosis, although with further examinations in the days to come, it was later learned that it was a quadricep strain, not a groin pull as initially believed. In hopes of allowing it to heal more quickly, I was taken off of work. Forced to stay home, lying back on my bed (for the most part), with my leg elevated. The shitty part was being virtually immobilized, but on the bright side, I was able to catch up on a lot of videotaped television programming.

I was informed by my physiotherapist that she'd spoken with my boss, who was not real pleased that I had been removed from active duty at work. He wanted me to return as soon as possible, which would've preferably been last Wednesday. I opted not, having finally rid myself a majority of the discomfort from the injury. I felt that if allowed the chance to rehabilitate at home with rest, I would less likely reaggravate the strain. Instead of returning immediately, I agreed to return to work today, November 7th.

Although I hadn't spoken with my boss since the week of the injury. He's based out of Calgary, so most times our exchanges are either via telephone, email, or those rare occasions when he comes to town. However, when I'd spoken with my physiotherapist last week, who relayed a message from the boss man, I suspected things may be a little tense this week. When I showed up for work this morning, immediately things felt a little off. He never said two words to me at first, instead shooting me uneasy glares. I don't know if he felt I was faking my injury for some time away from work or if, maybe, I was simply over-exaggerating it. Whatever the case, I felt his dissatisfaction. Then at about ten minutes past eight, he walks up to me and asks "How are your balls?"

I was speechless. Taken aback. "That seemed a little personal," I thought, but he just stood there in front of me, waiting for a response.

"What should I say?" I thought, "Shiny and sparkly? Smooth and silky?"

What the f*ck do you say to that question? I stood there before him for was seemed like an eternity, but actually it was only a few fleeting moments, before I informed him that it was a strained quadricep.

I later texted a friend about my morning greeting, to which he simply replied, "What a fag!" I never laughed so much in one day, of being virtually alone, as I did today. "How are your balls?" Ha ha..., PRICELESS!