Now, on to the series of unfortunate events led led to this:
Last Thursday I was at a park near my house with Chris, my brother Jason, and his girlfriend Michelle. We were long boarding, having a great old time, and then Chris says "let's go down the hill one more time" So I think I was going too fast, and my board went out from under me and without thinking I put my hands down when I fell. As soon as I stood back up I was afraid it was broken because it immediately had a bump near my wrist and just looked a little funky. Just for clarification, this is a long board. It's like a skateboard, but longer. THey are mostly just for cruising around on.
A couple of people have asked what happened to my arm and they think that I say "lawnmower" They think that I fell off of a rding lawnmower. I probably should not have been on one of these in the first place because I am pregnant, but at the time I didn't even consider that I was posing a risk to myself or my unborn child. Whatever. I guess it will be a good story to tell him.
It really did turn into a whole series of events...here's the watered down version: I knew that I needed x rays, so that night Jason and Michelle took Tate to my mom's, and Chris and I decided to go to the urgent care and only pay a $75 dollar copay, instead of the $150 ER copay. I wait in the waiting room of the urgent care for an hour, there is only me and 2 other patients in the waiting room, yet in 1 hour they call NO ONE back. So eventually I am called back and the Dr. says "I am not going to do xrays because you are pregnant. Follow up with an orthopedic dr. tomorrow" I know I am going to have to get an xray at some point, but whatever, there's 75 bucks for nothing.
In order to see a specialist I have to have a referral from my primary care doc. Well I don't have a doc in Gilbert yet, so the next morning I finally get in to see someone and then she gives me a referral to get x rays, and she says she will give me a call back when she has an appt with ortho. So I get my xrays. I can clearly see that it's broken, but I don't know too much about breaks to know much more than that. I still need to see ortho because no one has really looked at my arm or the xrays. So Chris calls my dr to see if the appt. with the specialist is arranged, and the office tells him my insurance is reviewing the situation. Chris calls the insurance and it's not under review, it's approved already, and so they give us some names and numbers of orthopedic docs that are providers on my insurance and we start calling all of them to see if anyone will see me on a Friday afternoon. Finally one office says, "I would just go to the ER and have them look at your xrays and splint your arm until you can see an ortho next week." I am so frustrated and in tears at this point, but we go to the ER and I get it splinted, ($150) and the Dr. looks at the xrays.
Why we are there, one of the ortho offices calls back and says that I have an appt with them on Tues. My arm had to be "manipulated" when I went in on Tues, because it wasn't in the correct position. That was interesting. They did a procedure I had never even heard of before called a "bier block" Basically they put a tourniquet on my upper arm for about 45min and inject lidocaine into the same arm. The torniquet keeps the lidocaine from acting systemically, so it mostly just stays in that arm because there is no blood flow in or out of the limb. It was weird. I couldn't control my arm at all, and I couldn't feel a thing. My arm looked funky, too. Like it was dead. So I got my black and orange Halloween cast on Tuesday. It worked out in the long run. I'll go back next Tuesday to make sure that the bone (radius) is holding the correct position...if not, I get surgery and a metal plate! Yay!
That was a long story, and not as watered-down as I first intended! Above everything else, this has given me a renewed appreciation for my mom, who lost her left hand just below the elbow in a car accident 12 years ago. She's amazing. I'm sure I'll have more to say about her before this is all over. So all things considered, I don't have it that bad. I have been blessed.
