On Saturday night, I broke my left forearm. Went to Emerg, got it splinted, and got appt with Fracture Clinic 4 days later.
Which was yesterday. Here's my series of tweets about it. (I wrote them out first. Apologies for lack of caps, but one-handed inputting.)
well, that was more of an ordeal than expected. in short, emerg fucked up. bone should have been straightened out before splinting
would that explain BIG pain since? i asked. side-eye between doc and tech. (lotta side-eye throughout) answer: repressively, yes.
straightening process involved what they called chinese finger cages, in use since medieval times (my supposition). like that woven trick tube you put fingers in
more you pull, tighter it gets. all 5 fingers put in metal versions of tube. suspended. weight put on upper arm.
you are left for 10 minutes to weep, scream, gnash teeth, your choice, as break gets reopened. i gnashed.
then 3 techs arrive. 1 to pull on injured arm, leaning away, no shit. 1 to pull on other side to counter pulling, and, best part
1 to "model" broken bit, i.e. push and shove and wrangle bone into alignment, much apologizing included.
here, i chose to gasp and gnash, while plaster strips applied as alignment proceeds.
next, xray to see how all that went. here, one prays to whatever deity that it went well and doesn't need redo
yay! doc comes back to look at xray. no redo. i'm good. i asked for drugs. scrip written for MANY T3s, higher dose, more frequently allowed
next appt 1 week
upshot: freer fingers, no light cast, worse break than i was led to believe by emerg goof
work upshot: i'm going to forgo one gig and hope i'm good enough for the one soon after that
Further update: not surprisingly, arm feels much better with bone properly aligned in stiff cast. Still hurts like hell of course.
But new cast had a hard pointy bit poking into inside elbow. I thought what the heck and went back to the clinic this morning to see if they would fix it.
Butt barely grazed chair after being told to take a seat when nice tech came and got me and removed pointy bit. She also told me that I had been a heckuva trooper yesterday and that clinic doc was MASSIVELY pissed with emerg doc and that there would be repercussions.
GOOD.
I looked hard for a photo of "Chinese finger cages," using all kinds of search terms. No luck. You'll have to use your imaginations.
