Monday, November 7, 2005
My next few entries will be written about the year following the events of our daughters broken leg. Not because of sorrow or bad memories but because that year and a half after that occurred was one of the most unusual years for Pat and I. So, here is one in which I show you who I really am, a female.
I used to order things from Fingerhut a lot. One particular thing I got were rollerblades for both Pat and myself. Pat was a hockey player for many years and rollerblades were relatively new at this time. Anyway, those blades came and I wanted to learn how to rollerblade. So, we strapped them on.
Pat grabbed his stick and a tennis ball and off he went swooshing circles out in the cul-de-sac having the time of his life yelling for me to hurry up. Well, I had the blades on but was taking baby steps out of our garage hanging on for dear life to our blazer. You know how when you have skates on and you jump each time you feel like you lose your balance? Well, I was doing that jump even while hanging on to the vehicle.
Finally I reached the driveway. Pat was razzing me, picking on me because I simply just stood there scared to death. Our driveway had a slight slope to it and I looked at that as if it were a mountain or something and told him that I couldn't do it, I was too afraid. He called me a chicken, teased me and flew circles around me while he did his nifty tricks with the tennis ball and stick.
Ok, well, fine. I figured when I was younger that since I skated with boys hockey skates that 'hey, this will be like old times once I get the hang of it'. So I started to S-L-O-W-L-Y inch my way down the driveway. Each time I would get to a speed that I considered too fast although a snail could've passed me three times over, I would quickly turn around so I was sideways and I would successfully stop. I did this a few times feeling more confident and cocky that this would be great once I got to the road. Well, again, I began my descent down the drive, got going too fast and again, turned to stop but this time I turned to far and found myself going backwards down this mountainous driveway....really, it was a small slope. I panicked, my instincts from figure skating kicked in (as I did obtain some from an older sister) and I went for the TOE PICKS!!!! BIG mistake. There weren't any. I of course did this with both feet and well, I found myself falling towards the tar face first. The next instinct kicked in...I locked my arms straight to catch myself, hit that driveway hard and IMMENSE pain shot through both of my arms from my wrist up to my elbows.
I rolled onto my back, only about 3/4 down that driveway after about 10 minutes of attempting to get to the end of it and I hurt. I was in so much pain. Pat continued to skate, told me to stop being such a whiner and to get up. He said this, laughed at me numerous times everytime I told him it hurt and continued to skate making my lying body one of his obstacles. I wasn't mad at him as he knows how I am about pain, I am really a whiner. Well, all my whining caught up to me this day because this was a pain I had never experienced before, a very bad one. Finally, I told him, 'No Pat, I am really hurt this time, I'm hearing trains'. I felt like I was going to pass out it hurt so bad. He stopped what he was doing, the smile long gone and was at my side. He knew from what I had said that I was not joking at this point.
He sat on the driveway next to me and started asking me all sorts of questions, what happened, where it hurt, and tried to get me up. I told him, 'honey, I can't move my arms. I'm afraid to get up because I want to pass out'. When he talked those trains were right there, he sounded a million miles away. He asked what he should do neither of us really knowing what to do. So I had him take my skates off for me and he held me and walked me into the house. At this point he had figured that I just sprained my wrists and began lecturing me on how to properly take a fall.
Well, as time progressed that evening I started to feel sick to my stomach with the pain. I couldn't hold anything in either hand, couldn't hold my baby or my other daughter and couldn't raise my hand to take a drink or anything. We decided that we should go to the doctor.
We get there, explain what happened and of course I was told that many people come in with rollerblade injuries and then was lectured by the doctor for not wearing wrist-gaurds, knee pads, helmet. That angered me because it was too late for any of that at this point and I had already said to myself that this was the first and LAST time that Iwould get on rollerblades. Ever!!!
I got x-rays done and was given the news. I had sprained both arms from wrist to elbow, sprained both wrists, had a badly sprained left elbow and fractured my right elbow. I had to wear a sling for a couple of weeks and take pain killers. Pat felt absolutely horrible and to this day still apologizes for his lack of compassion. But he did laugh about it and said that 'Only you could do this to yourself'. It was so bad that even his mother had to feed me dinner a couple of days until I figured out how to do it on my own. She had to come over while Pat worked to help with the kids. Talk about feeling like a helpless nimrod! Here I was 24 years old and I couldn't take care of myself!
I laugh about this now. I find it very par for the course for myself. I have never put on another pair of roller blades to this day. And I still say that I would much rather have a baby then to experience that kind of pain again. With Pat being such a wonderful story teller, I listen to him make fun of me, mock me, and tease me about this when he tells others. But I do this because a few months later, he got it back two fold. I will talk about that in an upcoming entry.
I guess for our family it was the year of broken bones or something. Funny, I had never experinced a broken bone in my life other than broken toes or fingers when I was much younger.
Then within a year ... well, I will get to that.
Written by louie0768 .
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