I am having NONE FUN! April 2, 2008

It’s 6:00 AM and I’m awake, but I don’t want to be.  On a normal day I would be up and around and getting ready for my day, but not today.  I’m up because I couldn’t stand to lay down on my battered old body one more minute.

Two days ago I fell off a chair at work.  OK, that sounds pretty stupid, I know, and in fact it was.  I stood on a little, kid-size chair to put some artwork on the wall.  When I went to step off, the chair tipped and I crashed off.  At first I thought my little class might be traumatized, but they asked me if I was ok and if they should go get another teacher, and then they went right back to playing.  I guess seeing your teacher laying in a heap on the ground is no big deal.  One little girl was quite concerned about the blood on my thumb and elbow and brought me a wet paper towel, but that was about it.

I could tell that I had a problem with my left leg and left hip.  After a few minutes I pushed myself up, only to discover that I couldn’t put any weight on that leg, so I dropped onto my chair, which was also painful.  So I got one of the kids to move a small chair over so I could elevate my foot, but that didn’t really help either.  I thought that maybe if I could get some crutches I could at least get up and move around, so I had my friend, L, borrow crutches from a neighbor and bring them to me.  L had a good laugh at my difficulties, especially after my class told her how I stood on the chair, which is against the rules, and how I made a loud thump and a big mess.  (I knocked a couple of piles of stuff on the floor on my way down).  It only took a minute to realize that the crutches didn’t help, so I finally called my boss to come in and sub for me and I called Piano Man to take me to the emergency room.

While I was waiting for them to come, I looked at my leg and realized that the left leg of my pants was stretched about as far as it could go because my leg had swollen so much.  Oh dear, I thought, that can’t be good.  Somehow, Piano Man and my boss got me out to the car and on to the hospital.  PAINFUL!

As soon as the nurse got my pants off and saw my leg she said, “Oh, dear!”  A student came in a said, “Ew”.  I looked down and there was a lump the size of a grapefruit sticking out of my leg and a bruise was developing on it.  The doctor had them start an IV in case I needed surgery, and to get some pain meds into my system fast.  Hooray for pain meds!  I was sure either my hip or my leg was broken, but after an hour of x-rays they said I just had a big, deep contusion.  They sent me home with ice packs and percocet and told me to keep my leg iced and elevated for a few days.

I have quite the bruise.  HSF’s blog has a picture of it.  Yuck.  My leg is starting to not hurt so much, but now the rest of my body feels like it’s been hit by a truck.  I discovered when I was awake at 1:00 this morning that I can put enough weight on that foot to get around a little bit easier, so hooray for that.

Enough of my whining.  I’m sure I’ll feel better if I can just get a few hours of uninterrupted, unpainful sleep, so I’m going back to bed now.