(What a difference a day makes, I need to get another photo up.)
If it ain’t bleeding, bone-out, or broken – and if you can walk - you’re fine. Get back to work.
That’s the philosophy I married in to. It is one of the reasons why twelve years ago, on the day when the accident no one remembers but me occurred, I didn’t go see a doctor.
Another reason was that spending excessive amounts on health insurance left nothing to actually pay for health care with.
In other words, we couldn’t afford to cover the high deductible we had taken out in order to make the policy attainable.
To catch you up: a pickup traveling south on the Gore Road in Highgate was passing multiple cars by the Flint property. (Late model Ford, white, blue pinstripe, teen to twenty-something male driving.) It’s a double line. I was on my bike riding north.
In order to not be hit by the driver-side mirror, I had to take the shoulder. My front wheel caught in a seam; I flipped over the bars, soared nine feet down into the ditch and landed on my left shoulder. The bike was still connected to my right foot due to wearing clipless pedals.
A young woman with a tiger tattoo on her left shoulder stopped to help me, but I was shocky and insisted on going home. Injured animals go to water; all I wanted was to see my husband again.
That, in short, was “the accident…”
Days later, I was in an emergency room unable to move my neck, and received a mega-dose of ibuprophen via needle in a very large muscle; I never had all my injuries seen to.
After all, I could walk – not well, but not all that badly. I limped, and would trip over anything larger than driveway gravel. My right knee occasionally collapsed, dropping me to the ground. I have impressive scaring from the more spectacular tumbles.
‘Just clumsy’, I tried to convince myself.
Tripping has been a constant reminder of my great luck that what happened to me wasn’t much worse.
Tripping has been a constant reminder of my great luck that what happened to me wasn’t much worse.
That’s the way life went until recently, when the accident no one remembers but me came home.
After years of using a treadmill, I purchased an elliptical exercise machine. Huff-puff, huff-puff. The old injuries re-opened – and were subsequently ignored. Within days, they began screaming fits.
I’m not as athletic as I once was.
I’ve become wimpy and doughy old. I’m seeking medical resolution because I don’t want to be at the rear of the pack when the zombies start showing up. Zombies have become much faster in recent years, in case you hadn’t noticed.
Thank goodness, I can cover my deductible now.
A doctor prescribed applications of ice and fire to control the swelling, but no karate, no rock climbing and no ass-kicking while waiting to see a specialist.
I’ve been told that technology has advanced to the point where a torn ligament can be repaired without too much trauma.
Fine. So long as I don’t have to miss work.
