Easter Sunday. The sun is shining. I’ve completed my March
blog just before the deadline. I’m eager to plant more flowers in the garden
and I need a few groceries. So off I go to the local market.
Heading home with a backpack full of groceries, including a dozen eggs, I am excited about the flowers I’m carrying in each hand. Two blocks from home, I check the traffic as I step with momentum off the curb. Ahhhhhh! Ohhhhhh! Crack! Owe!
The curb being twice as high as it was two feet earlier, I
have flown through the air and landed, both arms extended, on my left shoulder.
Strapped into the backpack, my upper (humerus – but not funny) arm bone has
taken the brunt of my momentum hitting the asphalt.
The sports convertible whose progress I had marked as I
stepped off the curb slows and stops. The middle-aged blonde female driver
advances. “Do you think you need medical attention?” I hear a disembodied voice
speak from the pavement. “Yes, I think I broke a bone. I heard it crack.” “Just
a moment while I park my car.”
A man on a bike has also stopped. They help me to the curb
and remove my backpack. I have chills and am sweating. “Where do you live?”
“Right down the street. Can we take the groceries home and then go to Urgent
Care?” “Sure.”
My Good Samaritans put my packages into the sports
convertible and help me into the passenger seat. I am holding my left arm with
my right, trying not to scream or cry from the pain. The driver's name is Debra. We arrive at home. Debra unloads the groceries,
observing that not a single egg has cracked or broken. I’m thinking it would
have been nice if my left arm and shoulder had been packed safely in my
backpack.
“You live alone?” asks Debra. “Yes.” “Then I need to take
you to Urgent Care. You’re in shock.” “Weren’t you headed somewhere before you
stopped?” “Well, I was thinking of going up to the Skagit Valley for the tulip
festival, but the tulips will be there next week.”
My Good Samaritan took me to Urgent Care, filled out the
paperwork since my glasses had broken in the fall, waited while they took
Xrays, confirmed that the humerus bone had two cracks, gave me a sling to hold
the arm and some narcotics to ease the pain, handed me a prescription for eight
sessions of physical therapy to begin in eight days, said to see my regular
doctor in a few days, and then she graciously helped me back into her car and
took me home.
Thank you. Thank you! Thank you. Debra would not give me her
last name or phone number so all I could do was ply her with thanks as she
headed off to a barbeque at a friend’s home. I entered my home to begin a
six-week to six-month journey as a one-armed fool.
