1 post tagged “major change”

I thought I would document some of the major things in my life, especially after the "Favorite Mistake" question mentioned earlier.

One cold January morning, I was on my way to school. I parked in a different spot from my usual choice, to be closer to campus. I was right across from the Arby's on 16th. I got out of my car, gathered my schoolbooks and debated whether or not to walk across 16th (a busy highway) at the middle, when there were no cars, or wander up to the crosswalk and lose a few minutes walking back.

4 steps later, I found myself on the ground in a reasonably intense level of discomfort. I was hyperventilating heavily and snow was strewn across my body. I remember my leg being sore, and my stomach doing the typical butterfly dance that it does in response to pain and shock. I shifted and turned around and got onto my knees with the intention of standing up, noticing absently how my ankle and foot dangled loosely from my leg. I think I was contemplating the next step as well - namely, extracting my cellphone from one of my dozen pockets to call 911.

I was just determining that getting up was not going to happen when a nice young woman came by and asked if I was okay. I told her I wasn't sure, and she attempted to help me stand up, but our mutual efforts were in vain. Another couple of would-be helpers pulled over - fortunately they had the advantages of upper-body strength and a car, so they managed to lift me up, support me and move me into the car and take me across the road to the very clinic on campus that I visited normally as a (relatively) healthy, bipedal humanoid.

Janice the nurse greeted me in the wheelchair one of my guardian angels had managed to bring over from the clinic and the next short while was a blur of gritted teeth, answering questions through the pain, talking to my mom (yeah, I know. She's my emergency contact - who'd've thought I'd actually need to USE that emergency contact info?), Janice calling 911, paramedics arriving with sweet merciful morphine (just enough to take the edge off; not enough to detach me from reality) and the bumpy trip to the Peter Lougheed.

Taking my boot off my swollen leg was excruciating - and this with nice, roomy Blundstone boots. I haven't worn them in the 7 months following my injury - primarily because for most of that time, my foot was too swollen to wear them. But now they're tucked away in my basement, on the side where drywall just went up (so they'll take some clearing of other boxes and things to reach), along with some unfortunate memories related to the incident.

I don't know if it's overly materalistic of me, but one of the biggest disappointments surrounding that whole incident was the loss of my pretty, almost brand-new, trouser-style jeans. They were a $60 investment at Ricki's that I saw slowly trickle down the drain as the shears of the paramedic severed the side seams of my pretty, flattering acquisition. I guess it's a good thing I followed the adage of wearing clean undies that day. Yes, of course it's all in perspective, but it sucked all the same. That, and receiving barely half of my tuition back from school after a long entanglement in beaurocratic red tape, but that's a story for another day.

I felt the bumps in the road and sidewalk and floor, but not as painfully as before the morphine settled in to distract me. I remember wincing every time the car went over a bump, but feeling it a little less in the ambulance - despite construction necessitating the ambulance parking in the back and my stretcher rumbling over the pavement to go in the rear door of the hospital.

... and I'm spent for now :P subject to edit/expansion/etc. but I thought I would get a good chunk written and go from there :)