On February 19th, 2014 at about 7:30 am, the boy and I left for work and school as usual that warm Wednesday morning. Day was already off on the wrong foot, errr at least the last 12 hours had been.
The dog ate my cake that I had just baked, a really good one too. It was the first time that I had bought this mix, didn’t know if golden butter flavored cake sounded all that great. I hoped it would, I do like butter flavor. The dog stole it off the counter while it cooled.
The dog also pulled my bra off the clothes line in the back yard. Wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t chewed it up too, re-washing, while annoying I could have done, she make it a strapless bra. That bra cost me $30 bucks so I wasn’t happy. She knew this.
But I couldn’t stay mad at her, not when she smiles at me. She is after all my girl.
We went to bed. About 4:30 I wake to a crashing sound. My brand new $300 flat screen HD TV got knocked over, and the screen cracked! My sales reps gave me the money for Christmas to buy that thing! I was really mad at my cats. They don’t smile so I stayed mad. Not how I wanted to start my morning.
We went along with our morning, making lunches, getting dressed, feeding the critters, only this morning I was shooting dirty looks at the cats and muttering mean things at the cats at regular intervals.
Finally we leave for work; we head out to the car, put our stuff in the car, get in the car, and start her up. Put her in reverse. She won’t move, I rev her, she VROOMMMMS real nice and loud for me, still doesn’t move. I mutter DAMN what is up with my car!, I get out of my car. She suddenly lurches backwards, my open car door plows me down, drags me a bit before completely passing over me. She keeps going, until she hits the brick wall across the street.
I get up swearing, that hurt, a number of colorful metaphors spew from my mouth over the next few minutes, I am still operating adrenal fueled. I look at my car, I am standing in the middle of the street still, I look to wear my car was. My first thought, seeing my shoes laying in my parking spot are “oh it knocked my shoes off.” Go ahead laugh, I did, I thought it was funny seeing my shoes there. I collect my shoes and go and move my car back into place. At this time my neighbor comes running out, “are you ok?”, “no” I respond, she’s ready to call 911. By this time my son has run and told my Mom I was in an accident. By now I am starting to realize my left arm isn’t working. I am also starting to notice I am in a great deal of pain.
I call my boss, “I know I am going to get an occurrence, but I am not coming in today, I was just in a car accident, I am going to the ER” My mom takes me to the ER, very brief wait, but by this time I am crying as the pain has fully set in. I try to stay chipper, not totally working.
At the ER they take 5-6 X-Rays oh my shoulder, my knee stars to hurt so my DR orders X-rays of my knee, another 3 or 4 shots, I ask the tech, “with all these X-Rays am I going to glow in the dark now?”, I smile, they laugh “no, you won’t” trying to lighten my mood and not be a cranky patient. It is taking all my energy to do this. I see the pictures from across the room, I mutter, “ I am not a DR but that looks broken to me. I know you can’t tell me the DR has to look at it first” back in my room we don’t wait long, DR comes in, tells me it is broken, big time (me words not hers) gives me 2 Percocet and a valium. 30 minutes later, a new sling, and orders to see my DR ASAP I am released.
I start notifying the masses of my accident. My best friend asks what he can do; I ask if he will replace the tail light on my car. He agrees, picks the car up later that evening. He mentions it is more than just the light, the light is all I need to make road legal again, the bumper, and the dents are just cosmetic.
My ex husband has been great through all this. His first concern is our son of course, mine would be too. He offers to call my insurance company for me, give the details, get claim number work with the owner of the wall. He works for an insurance company so they deal with him. Give him a case number. The landlord to my apartment gets him or my Dad in tough with the brick walls owner. They are agreeable, most of the bricks are salvageable, what isn’t I will need to pay for, sounds fair to me. My insurance will cover the property damage if I choose to submit the claim; I am waiting on the bill so I can decide if I will pay out of pocket or use my insurance.
Here are the shots of the damage
A normal collar bone, not mine.
My collar bone, it is in 3 pieces
The car
The Car Again, scratched my Anti-Obama sticker
And more alright this actually an after shot but it is the only one of the side damage I have
The wall
My ex took the boy Wednesday night so he could go to school Thursday/Friday, in hindsight I could have used him at home I needed a lot of help, I couldn’t do anything for myself. But he needed to go to school; my mom, dad and Ozzy took good care of me when wass away. The boy came home from school each night and did some chores. Ozzy brushed and tied my hair up each day and let me play with their puppies and say hi to Yankee, the pups are Sydney’s new baby brothers and sisters
I saw my DR on Thursday; he was surprised that I was seeing him before an orthopedic after looking at my X-Ray then playing show and tell with the other DR in the office. He makes some calls gets me an early appointment the next day to see a ortho. The ortho takes 5 minutes with my pictures, and has me scheduled for surgery for Thursday February 28th at 8:30 am. I am allowed to go to work until then. Great I was actually bored at home.
My Mom took me shopping Saturday, to find clothes that would be easier for me to get in and out of, so far my Mom and Ozzy have been dressing and undressing me. The also do my hair for me. We go to Goodwill first, we find an ugly pair of pants and a periwinkle skirt. mothing in the line of button up shirts, hmmmmm.... we try Ross. score, we visited 2 Ross stores, I find 5 cotton t-shirt material dresses, 2 tunics for later after I loose more weight, and 2 dress cover jackets., a light weight heather gray sweater and a black t-shirt material, cape like dress jacket. They cover my arms which is important for work, no bare arms allowed. We go to Target and I get sleep aids, 2 pillows, a body pillow pillow case, an ottoman. I can't lay down so i need things to hep prop me up. I also get a couple of easter peeps, they are my favorites and i will ony eat them at easter, so the are more special even though I know they come out for Valentine's, Christmas and Halloween now too. I look forward to them all year long.
Monday, was hard, but I made it through the day at work, Tuesday was harder, I didn’t have good support for my arm at work so it took its toll. Spoke to the surgery center and the ortho billing department Tuesday; I am supposed to pay upfront $500 to the surgery center. They didn’t threaten the cancel my surgery like the ortho DR did if I didn’t pay $887 before the surgery. I have, just no way of getting it to the office; I am not allowed to drive, I don’t have a checking account or debit card/credit card, they won’t budge, won’t even let my mom bring it over in the morning while I am in surgery. Really? So I start to cry, I am stressing, hurting and I want to start healing now. My girlfriend sees me crying, through the tears she eventually gets the story out of me. She says she will go and take it for me; she takes me at lunch to get the cash, and true to her word, at 4:20 sends me a picture of the receipt she gets from the office, now I am ready for surgery. Oye, good thing I got my tax refund on Thursday or I would have not had the cash for surgery or my dresses ans sleep aids, or any of my prescriptions. I need to build a savings up more. Going to make that a bigger priority now for sure. I think I also need a checking account I could use it have for this sort of thing.Just transfer what I need over and pay online. Save me some trouble from people that won't work with me like my ortho DR. I understand they want to be sure they get paid but their policy is really stupid.
Wednesday I barely made it to 10:30 before I was in tears working, my shoulder hurt so bad, my girl friend took me home, only after I knew she wouldn’t be in trouble if she didn’t make it back in 30 minutes, she offered when she knew how bad I was, but I didn't want her being late getting back to the office. My boss was out so my girl friend’s boss sent me home. Wednesday was a hard day.
Got up good early Thursday morning, but I always do that. Check in, pay my $500, they start the pre-op, I cooperate with everything except the pregnancy test, I know 100% without a doubt I am not pregnant, so I don’t want to pay for the test. I haven’t had what would cause a pregnancy in 4 years and my name isn’t Mary so there won’t be any immaculate conception either. They don’t argue with me. Yeah one less expense I will see on my bills, a major minor victory, but I am happy about it. Besides, I really didn’t need to go either.
They keep prepping me, I try to stay perky, I am scared, and this is my very first surgery ever. I hope my last. They weigh me, and take my history again, get me into my gown; I actually repeated my history 3 times that morning. Fine as long as everyone knows what is going on. I meet my nurse advocate, the lady who will be watching out for me in the ER with all the “boys” They give me a pen to draw on my shoulder, mark it with a yes like they tell me. The Dr also signs his name on my shoulder, he did it a little roughly that it hurt I bit my tongue when he did. They put my blue party hat on over my hair, I requested the Tweety Bird, (one of the nurses had a cap with Tweety Bird on it) and they only have the gauze blue ones. They put cuffs on my legs; compression cuffs that help prevent clots. They try to start the IV, my veins won’t cooperate. I start to cry it hurts I cry out. They stop, said they will do it when I am under in the operating room. They cover me with blanket and get ready to wheel me, just before going through the doors, they give me a heated blanket, I clutch it and pull it to my chest, I was a little chilly.
I notice the sign on the door to the OR, has a Latex warning, they are making sure I don’t have a bad reaction to latex, excellent, that is a relief but they would know what to do anyways, but the signs make sure everyone knows.
In the OR I am suppose to scoot from my gurney to the table, I have only 1 working arm, and they want me to go left, I can’t do it, I ask them to let me stand, and step up on to the table. They get me a stool and I move easily from one table to the other. Good idea they said. Now the hard part, they want me to lie down. This causes pressure on my shoulder! I immediately start to cry again, they put the mask on my nose and tell me to breathe deep. The next thing I remember, I am waking up, groggy, they keep forcing me to sip apple juice, I still haven’t opened my eyes, I feel funny, puffy, my shoulder, I am not sure it is still there anymore. I touch it, oh there it is. I feel like they are hustling me to wake up, get dress time to go home. Maybe they are their job is done now my body has to do its thing and heal.
Now 3 days post op, I am feeling pretty good. This morning I felt real good, best in over a week. I aggravated the boy; I made him help me clean this morning. Vacuum the living room, clean up my junk collection shelf, and the boy mopped the kitchen floor.
I then sent the boy to Wendy’s to get us some food and Circle K to get my Sunday paper, after lunch I took off the bandage, oh that is what I have been waiting for since my surgery, I get to take ashower, oh the warm water felt so good, I finally got all the orange scrubbed off of me it felt so good, I felt so fresh again, getting that puffy bulky bandage off my shoulder felt great too. I got to see the incision for the first time. It looks like the DR put a zipper in my shoulder.
The zipper
My best friend returned my car to me, looks great, fixed the light and the bumper too. It looks great. He did a great job, and he tells me not to worry about it when I ask him how much the car damages cost.
New bumper
The wall still waits its repair
Oh and I even stitched a little today, slower than normal, but I got a few stitches in before I fell asleep for afternoon nap. I have been doing that a lot lately.
I am staying home Monday and Tuesday, going to see how Wednesday goes, I got a pillow pet to support my arm if he works out then I will be able to work, if not I will file for temp disability. I hope I can go back to work, with this guys help.
My Yorkie Neo has been keeping watch over me, doesn’t he look so abused snuggling in my pillows? He does need a bath though.
