To Crush a Radius: Part 1

How I constantly manage to get into crappy situations without actually doing anything dumb or dangerous always amazes me.

All I was trying to do was make a few extra dollars by pet sitting. I had gone over to a nearby apartment building to let out a couple dogs before bed. It was about 10:30 on Sunday night, February 17th. There was no way out of the apartment building without walking on ice. As I was heading to the car, my left foot flew right out from under me, and before I even knew what was happening, I landed backwards on my left palm.

Immediately, I knew I had broken my arm. I managed to get my phone and call Andy, still on the ice. Through my sobs, I told him I fell on the ice and was pretty sure I had broken my arm.

Since we only have one car these days, he had to get a Lyft. I carefully made my way back to the car, and called my friend Mandi, to have someone to talk to me and keep me distracted until Andy got to me.

Mandi did a great job calmly talking to me until Andy found me.

Andy could see that my wrist was clearly broken, so we headed straight to the ER at Parker Adventist. My hand was bent forward, and my fingers and forearm were severely swollen. No matter how hard I tried, I could not budge my wrist. I may as well have tried to bend my femur. It wasn’t gonna happen. I could barely budge my fingers, but I could get a tiny bit of movement.

The pain just kept getting worse, and Andy dropped me off at the ER, so I could get registered while he parked.

I finally got called back (it was actually just a few minutes, but when your wrist is so jacked you can’t bend your elbow, a minute seems like an hour), and the nurse brought me some Vicodin, which did…almost nothing for the pain. The xray tech came in with his portable machine, and I went through hell getting those shots. The last pose, I told him to get fast, because I had to yell and grunt to tolerate the pain.

Now, I have had literally hundreds of xrays done before, and never have I ever had an xray tech just straight up say, “Oh yeah, you crushed it.”

The ER doctor came in and said I badly broke my radius, in more pieces than he could count. He said, “I’m not a hand surgeon, but I am pretty sure you’re going to need surgery.” Yay.

There was no way he could set my hand as it was, so he had to have it put in traction to get the swelling down enough so that the wrist would straighten, and he could move things back into place. The traction was remarkably effective.

One of the broken pieces of the radius was clearly poking out of the back of my hand. You can see it in the picture if you look hard enough.

By this time, they had also given me morphine, which took the pain from about a 9 to an 8.5. When the doctor was ready to set it, he gave me Ketamine, along with what was essentially a psychedelic, and told me to “embrace the weird.”

I wasn’t out when they set it and put a cast on it, but I have no memory of it. Andy, however, does. Apparently there were severe facial contortions, and some screaming. I told him he should have videoed it, and he said he knew I would want him to, but he just couldn’t do it. I legit wish he had.

When I regained full consciousness, my arm was in a cast all the way up past my elbow.

They sent me home with a Vicodin prescription and a strong Ibuprofen prescription. But let’s be honest. Vicodin is not enough.

We got home early on the 18th, and Andy got me settled in my recliner before he headed out for my prescriptions.

All the Vicodin did was take the edge off the pain enough to barely deal.

Both Andy and I were able to get a little sleep that night, but not much.

What about you? Have you ever broken a bone falling on the ice? What was your experience? Let me know in the comments!