Zander's Inside Voice

Daily writing prompt

Have you ever broken a bone?

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Yes-two bones in two different incidents.

The first was a bone in my ankle. I was running with the kids in the backyard and stepped into a hole where a tree had been recently removed. It was mostly filled, but the filler dirt had settled, leaving a small three inch ditch. I wasn’t wearing socks either, and my foot slid in my shoe. I slid in my shoe and sheared part of the bone off. I thought it was a just a sprain when I stood up, although I thought I had heard some kind of crack when I fell. I had to hobble inside and I slept on the couch with my foot up on the back of it.

The next morning I went into sick call (for non-military people, you could go in every morning between 0700-0730 to be seen for anything that developed overnight/over the weekend on Mondays) and was promptly told by the doctor that it wasn’t broken. He told me to go home and rest and ice it. He also told me I did not hear any cracking because it wasn’t broken. All that without even an x-ray. Eventually I convinced him to at least x-ray it and that’s when he discovered that yes, I had indeed “broken” it. He gave me crutches and a referral for an orthopedic doctor. Then came physical therapy. All in all, not a fun experience.

The second break was my right hand. As a right-handed person, this was catastrophic and super foolish on my part. I was in an intense argument with the ex and instead of punching a person, I punched a mirror. A half-inch, very thick pane of mirrored glass. The mirror didn’t break, but my anger didn’t feel get better with that first punch, so I went back for a second punch and broke a bone in my hand. Dumb. So, so dumb. My mom drove me to the emergency room and my dad stayed with the kids.

They didn’t put me into a cast at the ER, but I also got a referral to the same orthopedic doctor as when I broke my ankle. He casted me in the worst way ever and off I went. A few weeks later, I got a new cast. And a few weeks after that I was free again, but now had occupational therapy to fix my hand and regain strength.

I was kinda sad because I didn’t keep my left hand up at the high level it was functioning at. I could write sort of fast and legibly by the end of the eight weeks. I could use that hand for everything I needed to do for personal care, and my right hand hadn’t lost as much strength as I thought it had. I couldn’t had two very strong hands and been ambidextrous if I had just kept up with it.

Not counted in these two bone breaks is the surgical break that was done on my right arm to shorten my ulna, called an ulnar osteotomy. Basically he opened my arm, sliced out some bone and fused it back together with a titanium plate. More physical therapy, lots of pain in recovery, a really bad reaction to the prep solution they used on my arm, and no more wrist pain!! So that surgery was a raging success.