My hand knit socks do go well with the emergency room decor in my local rural hospital, don't they?
I spent a few hours getting X-rays and then abandoned to the electronic nursing aftercare, hooked up to beeping and squeaking and flashing machinery in the hospital emergency room this morning.
Fortunately I had Zanzibari author Abdulrazak Gurnah's Afterlives on my electronic library app on my phone so I was not without reading material. I soon ran out of reading everything I could on the walls of the room. Reading helps distract me from physical pain.
Now I have been discharged with a prescription for serious opiates and a rainforest of papers, some of which are referrals to orthopedic doctors 150 miles round trip from where I live. Some of whom I can choose by photo (rather than medical credentials) - kinda like a tinder for people with broken bones.
Jackerouacalope currently gets to peek out from under a bandage which secures my arm and hand to a splint applied by a nice young emergency room tech. The arm is suspended in a not very effective sling. It's gotta stay this way until March 28.
Yes that's the soonest the esteemed bone doctors in the big smoke down south will see me. When I remonstrated, pleading pain of a displaced fracture (yes I've read my ER discharge and referral notes), the person who answered the phone at the orthopedic establishment said: "We only have to see you within ten days. You have been prescribed paid medication, right?"
Sheesh. No wonder we have an opioid addiction problem in this county. At least one of my prescribed medications is an opiate derivative which, according to my internet research, carries a high schedule addiction warning. The other drug prescribed to me today causes heart attacks, multiple organ damage, kidney failure or (best case scenario) internal bleeding throughout the digestive tract.
The cause of death on my mother's death certificate was "massive internal hemorrhage". She was prescribed similar drugs for a broken spine, crumbled by osteoporosis.
And also, for the record, March 28 is ELEVEN days after the fall which broke both my radius and ulna on left arm. But it doesn't help to argue with these greedy, uncaring, unhealth promoting, medical practitioners' gatekeepers.
Meanwhile I've prescribed myself spoonfuls of tahini and honey, and baked sweet potatoes to support the shock response and healing or just because they are delicious.
I might also try to make a special tea from something which I grew outback last year, and which might just help with the pain which, drama queen that I am, I currently assess as 25 on a 1 - 10 scale.
No Symphytum officinale in the garden, sadly. I've tried, without success, to grow it here in the desert.