Take The High Road

New Material for This Book (Clumsy I Am) The most recent of my many traumas occurred while writing this book. It was a Wednesday afternoon and getting close to the time I leave to pick my wife up from work. It was routine for me to take the garbage out at that time because Thursdays were pick up days and when we got home it would be dark during the Fall and Winter months. For 11 years I have been dropping the heavy garbage bags over the railing and then dragging them across the yard before lifting them over my chain locked fence for pick up the next morning. When you come out of the kitchen door, a few feet to the right are 16 cement steps that go down to the cement walk and back yard. Our back porch was cluttered with boxes and I was unable to toss the garbage bags over the railing without moving to the right. I was facing straight ahead and got closer and closer to the top step while continuing to toss each garbage bag over the railing. I was not paying attention and had moved too far to the right. I stepped off the top step while looking downward at the yard where I was dropping the garbage. As I lost my balance, I began to do a cartwheel down the stairs. I reached out and grabbed the post with my left hand. The momentum of falling to the right made my body swing out toward the yard at which time the railing broke and I fell through it. It must have been terribly rusted. Wish I had known that, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered. I fell approximately twenty feet to the ground and landed on my right side. While airborne, my body flailed to the ground. I am a heavy weight, so I went down hard on the right side of my body. I knew as I was falling that it was going to be bad. I was in my mid-fifties and knew I would not get up as I had when I took a thirty-foot dive while helping my dad fix his roof. After all, I was about 35 years younger at that time, and walked away from that one. As I fell to the ground, I screamed help as loud as I could because I wasn’t sure if I would be able to yell for help after I hit the ground. I landed with great force and the pain was indescribable. As you have heard, I am no stranger to injury and pain, but this is up near the top of the list. The force was so great that the right side of my head smacked the ground too. My ribs were killing me, and I could hardly breathe. With every breath I took, there was excruciating pain. I thought, my God, did I collapse my lung again? Because the injury to my ribs was so bad, I always forget to mention that I broke my little toe on my right foot too, There was a terrible burning there but that was the least of my worries and that pain was drowned out by the pain of my ribs. I tried to look around and see if help was coming as I moaned and groaned, and no one was there. It seemed like an hour but was only five minutes before someone showed up to help. My wife was at work, but neighbors came to my rescue. A neighbor climbed over the fence, so she could go into my house and get my keys. Then she unlocked the fence so the paramedics could enter my back yard. I had fractured ribs 4, 5, and 6 from the front and the back while also breaking ribs 7, 8, 9, and 10. This means that seven ribs were broken/fractured in ten different places. Friends who have known me for a long time have said, “You don’t do anything half ass. Most people break one or two ribs, but you break seven.” The ICU/Trauma unit at a local hospital was excellent and I was in good hands. However, when I was transferred to the regular unit, not so much. To make bad worse, I was discharged from the hospital with an infected arm where my IV medication was administered. The nurse said that he was surprised I was being discharged because my arm was infected. The homecare nurse stopped by my house the day after I was discharged, and she too was amazed that I was discharged with an infected arm. She contacted my Primary Care Physician (PCP) after taking my vital signs and finding that my temperature was 102.3 degrees. That means that fifteen hours after discharged, my wife was transporting me to the emergency room of another local hospital. It was there that I acquired pneumonia followed by sepsis. My temperature reached a high of 103.4 and I was being packed in ice to bring my temperature down. The doctors from the infectious disease team were now ordering for me to receive four weeks around the clock with IV treatments of a strong antibiotic. That wasn’t bad enough so while trying to put a pick line in my arm, the nurse struck a nerve located not far from my arm pit. When she struck the nerve, I jumped, and every muscle clinched and tightened. Imagine that with 7 ribs broken in 10 places. My final part of this nightmare occurred when I had to be transferred from the hospital to a now needed long term rehabilitation facility for the last three weeks of IV antibiotic treatment. I would also receive physical and occupational therapy to get my strength back after being in a hospital bed for five weeks before returning home. The problem was when I arrived the antibiotic was not there. It had not been ordered. The severe pain, the narcotics I was taking, and the many mishaps made me wonder if these two hospitals were conspiring to kill me. Intellectually, I knew this was not so, but I was becoming angry about all the mistakes that had been made, some of which were life threatening. The incompetency, neglect, and by some a lack of care by the medical staff was scary and disheartening. But as usual, I got through it by God’s grace.