Okay, so as most of you know...I was in a bicycle accident on April 19th on my way to work. Heading out the door to catch the train, I thought "hm...maybe I will take my bike to the station today!" Having never done that I figured it would get me there a bit faster than the twenty minutes it takes me to walk.
So about five minutes after I left the house, I was on a quiet, sleepy side street in Burlingame and my purse slipped off my shoulder and was hanging around my wrist next to the front tire. So I was thinking to be safe, I better stop before it gets caught in my tire and causes me to wreck. So instinctively, I clipped my left brake (which also happens to be my front brake!), and for some reason my left hand doesn't know the meaning of the term "softly" so I stopped abruptly and flipped over my handlebars.
I lay in the street for a few seconds dazed, and then the inevitable tears start flowing. Two very nice ladies who happened to be out on their morning walk, stopped to help me up and got my bike out of the street. They offered to walk me home after we couldn't reach Chris on his cell phone, but I assured them I was fine (through tears) and pushed my bike home.
When I walked in the front door, Chris came around the corner when he heard me come back in and I burst into tears even harder (scaring him half to death). I finally managed to tell him what had happened and that I knew I broke my elbow. So he gathered me up and took me to the Emergency Room down the road. After some very painful X-Rays, followed by some very nice morphine, I was kicked back doing just fine in my hospital bed.
The Doctor came back in after looking at the x-rays and told me that I had in fact broken my elbow and they would need to take me in right away for surgery. After some very messy insurance nonsense, Kaiser (my insurance company) sent an ambulance to come get me from the non-kaiser hospital. I went through the same thing at the new hospital...x-rays (though not as painful this time around)...and A LOT of waiting around.
A very nice Physicians Assistant for Orthopedics came to see me and took a quick look at my elbow. She walked me through what was going to happen to my arm in surgery and told me that they wouldn't be able to do surgery for two days.
I was finally released later afternoon and Chris took me home. The next morning, I met with my surgeon and another very nice PA. The Dr. walked me through all of my questions about the surgery and told me he would see me the next day in the operating room.
Surgery Day.
I arrived about 10:30 as requested by the nurse and found out my 12:00pm surgery time had been bumped to roughly 2:00pm. I was in quite a bit of pain and very frustrated (until they gave me some medicine... ;). What seemed like ages later, they took me back and I met the surgical team who would be assisting on my surgery. They were all VERY nice and I felt very comfortable (or was it the IV that was making me comfortable?).
The next thing I knew, my nurse was waking me up and bringing me food (I was soooo hungry!). Chris came back to see me and I was very happy to see him. :) About 45 minutes - an hour later, we headed for home.
About five days later, I met with my Doctor again and had the splint taken off. He took more x-rays (above) and said it looked great. Having not thought about it ahead of time I was PRAYING that he didn't use staples because that just sounds gross. He was able to do a cosmetic closure so there are no stitch or staple marks! My incision was still bleeding a little bit which grossed me out. Chris saw it first and told me how great it looked so I told him to take a picture and show me...we did not agree on how nice it looked. haha.
And now the recovery begins. I was doing okay initially with being able to move it a little bit, but it has decided to stiffen up on me now. I am lucky if I can bend it 30 degrees at this point. It makes washing my hair and getting dressed very interesting to say the least! Aside from the frustration of not really being able to use my left arm, I am keeping as positive as I can. I just have to be patient and eventually physical therapy will get my arm moving again...
