Laid Up

On Tuesday, I went with Hope, Alexa, and Johnny 6-pack to watch King Kong (the new one) at Red Rocks. The others had seen movies at the giant, outdoor screen at Red Rocks before but had not seen the movie. I had seen the movie but never any one at Red Rocks.

We prepared a picnic dinner of chips, deli sandwiches, pasta salad, and gooey-caramel-cookie bars that we were going to eat under the stars while watching the movie. You can't bring booze into the amphitheater, so we enjoyed Bud Light and raspberry-lemon daiquiries in the parking lot before going in. (The daiquiries are a recent, delicious concoction I've developed: Bacardi Limon, Chambord, and sour mix - a splash of club soda is recommended, but optional and not practical for travel (most excellent).)

Recognizing the apt convergence of theme, background, and possibility, I handed my camera to Hope and told her to take a picture of me up on the rocks climbing around like a big monkey. As I approached the rocks, Alexa and Johnny portentously yelled to me that they would not be taking me to the emergency room and that if anything happened, they were going to see the movie. I assured them that the movie was definitely worth staying for regardless of my fate.

I scrambled up a few feet to a small landing area that had eroded out of the wall of red sandstone. As I turned around to face my photgrapher, I slipped in some of the silty sandstone dust. The fall to the ground was about eight feet. On the way down, I used my hands to gently push and guide myself away from the rocks so that I didn't smack my head or bounce off the rock wall.

I landed on a clear, almost flat, dirt surface, and immediately bellowed a deep, exhaustive, "AAARRRGGHHHHHHHH!" Something very bad had happened.

I instantly grabbed my left hamstring with both hands and pulled as hard as I could in a useless attempt to relieve the stress and pain on my lower leg. When I finally brought myself to actually look at my leg, the deformity confirmed my fears. Although nothing had broken through the skin, the bones below my knee were bulging out most unnaturally. The pain was excrutiating. My friends ran for help and provided comfort and encouragement.

Paramedics responded. They needed to use a scoop stretcher to load me up. This kind of stretcher allows them to wiggle each, separated side of the stretcher under me from either side and then to secure the carrier once I am above the cross-slats. As we headed out the winding, bumpy, dirt roads exiting the Red Rocks parking lots, the medic got me started on, what I believe was, my first IV. It took him two go's to get it, but the stabbing was a welcomed distraction from the pain in my leg. They gave me some painkiller, and although it helped with my anxiety, it didn't do much for the pain.

I'm not sure how or why Alexa and Hope decided that I should go to St. Anthony - Central near 17th and Sheridan, but it was a wise choice. We pulled up to the emergency room at somewhere, and I'm sort of guessing here, around 9:45. Triage and admissions had me rolling straight up to x-rays. There was one tech taking the films and one other guy assisting out of sight. They took two or three angles of my knee and then two angles of my hips, including one most indecenct crotch-shot.

Somewhere around the third or fourth back and forth trip between the patient part of the room and the operational part (to change films and take the x-rays), I heard the unknown person say something to the guy helping to get me diagnosed. My tech responded with something along the lines of, "Whoa, dude."

"Man, you wanna see a picture of your leg?" he called out.

It was more than just disloacted, and it was pretty bad: a tibia-fibula plateau fracture. The weight of my entire, falling body had essentially been concentrated through my femur and focused onto my angled, lower-leg bones. The force was enough to crack my fibula for approximately five inches along the medial side. The top of the tibia cracked into a few pieces. That x-ray tech was the first one to let me know I'd be spending the night.

They took a cat scan of the trauma before sending me into surgery. I woke up while they were rolling me into my room somewhere around 3:30 in the morning. Strangely, my first recollection of being awake is that I was already engaged in a conversation. I find this freaky and logic defying, but I understand it to be a pretty common effect with Versed, the anaesthetic.

To stabilize my leg, they drilled two holes into my shin and two into my femur - above and below the knee. Into the holes they sank titanium pins. The pins stand five-to-six inches above the blunt holes punched through my skin. They go straight through the muscle and into the bone. When I shift from horizontal to vertical, I can clearly feel my quadricep muscle shift across the rod which was planted two inches above my knee. The feeling is a bit usettling. Once the pins were in, they yanked good and hard on my leg to bring it back to its original length. Once they achieved a facsimile of the old geometry of my leg, they secured titanium bars above my leg and onto the pins. Essentially, they have locked my leg and largely isolated the trauma site from any musculo-skeletal pressure. Once the swelling abates somewhat, they will initiate the repair process.

I left the hospital Friday, late afternoon. Since my house requires climbing stairs to enter the premises and features a segregated layout with the bathrooms and bedrooms on the second floor and the dining and living areas on the first, I decided that I would convalesce at my brother's house. I'm here until my next surgery on Tuesday. Then, they will patch the medial fibula fracture with a large titanium plate. The following week, after again allowing for a reduction in swelling, a third surgery will place another plate over the front part of my upper lower-leg. After that, it's eight weeks of bearing no weight on the repaired leg while undergoing rehab and getting around on crutches.

There's a lot more bits and pieces to tell about this story. I'll be updating my tales of woe and adding pics as I have the energry. There is just no possible way for me to describe the intense and nearly unbearable pain I have been facing: excrutiating, defined.

I also cannot possibly express the thanks that I owe to Hope, my sister, brother, and Miguelina Hope. I am one stubborn son-of-a-bitch, and this injury has hobbled me, humbled me, and made me most dependent on others. I hate that I need the help but am deeply thankful that I have it.

More to come.

Jonathan 8/13/2006 10:14:00 AM