"That's life. That's what all the people say; Flying high in April; Shot down in May." -Frank Sinatra
I think I have been what Frank Sinatra would have ment by "Shot Down." The past weeks have been a bit of a challenge where obstacles have been repeatedly thrown up in front of me. It started about the 22 of November when I broke my arm during soccer practice. It was towards the end of the practice, maybe in the last twenty minutes, meaning scrimmage time. I was playing and ignorantly excited to be doing so. I ran towards an opposing attacker and easily stole the ball as his control was weak. I pulled it to the left and moved it forward down the field mentally calculating the relative position of the defenders I was approaching quiet rapidly. I was on him, or more he was on me, and I pulled the ball left out of his reach. His foot dove out catching the shin of my back foot which was stopped like a wrench being thrown into the gears of a whirling machine. From full sprint to dead stop I stuck out my left arm instinctively and it was snapped in the twirl of out-of-control summersault. To me it was a blur of dark sky and lit turf, the roughend edges hinged by the incredibly loud sound of craking bone like a twig being broken in two. The whole field heard the sound and none had any doubts about the seriousness of the fall. In the moments of tumble and sound, the miliseconds between another day at soccer practice and a month in a cast, my arm miracioulsy changed shape. It grew another elbow. I starred in horror, noticing the bone poking at the in side of my skin producing a little knob on my smooth skin. Maybe just a bug bite, that ended a little too sharply! It took roughly five seconds from the sound of the snap for me to vocalize my truama. I couldn't scream, not in the way people do on rollercoasters or in horror movies, I just couldn't find it in me. Instead I shrieked over and over a sound that sounded like a continues voice-crack. I kept doing this as coaches ran over and kids ran over but stepped back when they too saw the wierd shape of my arm. It wasn't until the coaches gingerly lay me on my back and my arm to my side out of my view that I shut up. I realized that there was no pain. A weird numbness crept through my fingers and arm. In fact, only with a glance to my left did I understand why people were crowded around me shouting for the other coaches to get the nurse, oh shes left the school already, ok get the first aide kit, call his parents, do you know your mom's number, no? why not? its ten digits, don't worry I've got it, ok shes says your grandmother will be here soon, wheres the ice? whats taking it so long? I don't think my arm is supposed to look like that.
I waited on the field for twenty minutes or so whistling pieces of songs. My skin was exposed and as I had sweat off my bug spray mosquitos feasted on my nervous blood. Though I didn't know it at the time. Coaches repositioned my arm, trying to get ice on it, but this sometimes involved weight being put on the joint that wasn't supposed to be there. Uh could you move that, like now! Cardboard was bent around my arm and some more was slid under the front to make up for the angle. A sling was put over my shoulder, but backwards so through the same struggle to get it on we took it off and back on the other way. I remebered a year before, almost to the day laying on the field, people wondering if my arm was broken or what. Today was different; the question was different: How the hell are we ganna get him to the hospital! And finaly I was ready to leave. Coach instructed me saying I was going to sit up, but take your time, and then they were going to lift me up carefully. It happened much more quickly than explained, thankfully. As I passed by my friends I joked with them about my arm and smiled, for the last time that night.
As I was laying in them same bed as I had been almost a year ago in the same ER I was given great care. The nurses were very nice and treated me like one of their own sons. This time I was hooked up to an EKG and had my blood pressure taken. I kept asking my bewildered grandma and sister if the moniter was saying I was alive or not. It eased up the tension a little, and my grandma needed that. I lay calmly in the bed kinda just not wanting to be there. Friends came over to the hospital, and I was greatful for the company and thoughtfulness they shared. Just as soon as I had got comfertable there, still in a state of denail, mention of putting my arm back in place arose. Ya I sorta lost all calm there, slowly at first. A beefy man who was the doctor talked with my parents and I stayed wide eyed in bed realizing what they were going to have to do. I still hadn't reached a state of tears like my grandma or mom. That soon changed.
Nurses grouped around my bed and the doc pulled up a stool. This was after my teary-eyed mother confronted the doctor and asking him what pain medicines he had. She begged for morphine but just like a nice steak or mexican food, you can't get that in India. I was given some pain medicine that was completely useless and unnecessary because it had no affect. The doctor sat down next to me and we spoke in hindi a little but I was too nervous to say too much outside of the basics. Then the doctor grabbed my hand and the nurse my elbow. He kindly told me to look away. What type of fucking painkiller is that?!? Look away?! What? There's no pain if I can't see it? I don't know about you doc, but are you shitting me! I wasn't so calm anymore. I waited as they held both sides of my arm because there were now two sides! I waited almost too long. He would tense and I would brace myself and then he would relax leaving me unsure wether to keep bracing myself or relax a little. This happened a few times before to my luck, he caught me as I started to relax. He pulled on one side and the nurse pulled on the other. My forearm muscles fought against there pull by pure reflex For the lack of anything but a cliche, fire shot through my arm. I almost passed out. Easily the worst pain in my life. I don't think the look-away painkiller did much.
I was sent home wearing a plaster cast, by way of a specialist named Dr. Bajaj. He was recommended by every expat, especially my friend who had broken his arm a month before. (His cast came off that night.) I was scheduled for a procedure that would realign my arm perfectly to be done the next day.
That day was Friday and as my sister went off to school I went off to a small little clinic where I watched James Bond on TV until the doctor arrived and I was put into a surgical gown that looked like a picnic table cloth. Shaking from fear, I was pulled into the OR on the way watching the ceiling lights pass by overhead. People in surgical masks stood around me. It took three painful tries to get the IV needle in the right spot. When it was finally in, I started to relax under the placebo the anesthesia was taking effect. Before they injected it into my IV I said drowsily What color casts do you have? Green and blue. Not wanting to having a matching cast with my friend I chose blue. It was the same color as last year. And then I woke up. It was sunday morning and I didn't want to be waking up but slowly I did and then fell back asleep. I heard my dads voice. Then I fell back asleep. Blackness clouded my eyes until I realized it wasn't Sunday morning at all but the room I had waited in before. I lay with an IV in my arm and felt drugged. Because I was. My dad swears I revealed all my secrets under the influence, but I know hes joking. I had a terrible 'hangover' the rest of the day.
The next week we went to Dharamsala and met His Holiness the Dali Lama XIV. I thought his blessings would help me, sending me on a track to healthiness. The next day I got dengue. Now, as that lasted for two solid weeks, as soon as that ended I got a significant respiratory infection with a hacking cough through the night. I am now almost over it. Whats next?
I think I have been what Frank Sinatra would have ment by "Shot Down." The past weeks have been a bit of a challenge where obstacles have been repeatedly thrown up in front of me. It started about the 22 of November when I broke my arm during soccer practice. It was towards the end of the practice, maybe in the last twenty minutes, meaning scrimmage time. I was playing and ignorantly excited to be doing so. I ran towards an opposing attacker and easily stole the ball as his control was weak. I pulled it to the left and moved it forward down the field mentally calculating the relative position of the defenders I was approaching quiet rapidly. I was on him, or more he was on me, and I pulled the ball left out of his reach. His foot dove out catching the shin of my back foot which was stopped like a wrench being thrown into the gears of a whirling machine. From full sprint to dead stop I stuck out my left arm instinctively and it was snapped in the twirl of out-of-control summersault. To me it was a blur of dark sky and lit turf, the roughend edges hinged by the incredibly loud sound of craking bone like a twig being broken in two. The whole field heard the sound and none had any doubts about the seriousness of the fall. In the moments of tumble and sound, the miliseconds between another day at soccer practice and a month in a cast, my arm miracioulsy changed shape. It grew another elbow. I starred in horror, noticing the bone poking at the in side of my skin producing a little knob on my smooth skin. Maybe just a bug bite, that ended a little too sharply! It took roughly five seconds from the sound of the snap for me to vocalize my truama. I couldn't scream, not in the way people do on rollercoasters or in horror movies, I just couldn't find it in me. Instead I shrieked over and over a sound that sounded like a continues voice-crack. I kept doing this as coaches ran over and kids ran over but stepped back when they too saw the wierd shape of my arm. It wasn't until the coaches gingerly lay me on my back and my arm to my side out of my view that I shut up. I realized that there was no pain. A weird numbness crept through my fingers and arm. In fact, only with a glance to my left did I understand why people were crowded around me shouting for the other coaches to get the nurse, oh shes left the school already, ok get the first aide kit, call his parents, do you know your mom's number, no? why not? its ten digits, don't worry I've got it, ok shes says your grandmother will be here soon, wheres the ice? whats taking it so long? I don't think my arm is supposed to look like that.
I waited on the field for twenty minutes or so whistling pieces of songs. My skin was exposed and as I had sweat off my bug spray mosquitos feasted on my nervous blood. Though I didn't know it at the time. Coaches repositioned my arm, trying to get ice on it, but this sometimes involved weight being put on the joint that wasn't supposed to be there. Uh could you move that, like now! Cardboard was bent around my arm and some more was slid under the front to make up for the angle. A sling was put over my shoulder, but backwards so through the same struggle to get it on we took it off and back on the other way. I remebered a year before, almost to the day laying on the field, people wondering if my arm was broken or what. Today was different; the question was different: How the hell are we ganna get him to the hospital! And finaly I was ready to leave. Coach instructed me saying I was going to sit up, but take your time, and then they were going to lift me up carefully. It happened much more quickly than explained, thankfully. As I passed by my friends I joked with them about my arm and smiled, for the last time that night.
As I was laying in them same bed as I had been almost a year ago in the same ER I was given great care. The nurses were very nice and treated me like one of their own sons. This time I was hooked up to an EKG and had my blood pressure taken. I kept asking my bewildered grandma and sister if the moniter was saying I was alive or not. It eased up the tension a little, and my grandma needed that. I lay calmly in the bed kinda just not wanting to be there. Friends came over to the hospital, and I was greatful for the company and thoughtfulness they shared. Just as soon as I had got comfertable there, still in a state of denail, mention of putting my arm back in place arose. Ya I sorta lost all calm there, slowly at first. A beefy man who was the doctor talked with my parents and I stayed wide eyed in bed realizing what they were going to have to do. I still hadn't reached a state of tears like my grandma or mom. That soon changed.
Nurses grouped around my bed and the doc pulled up a stool. This was after my teary-eyed mother confronted the doctor and asking him what pain medicines he had. She begged for morphine but just like a nice steak or mexican food, you can't get that in India. I was given some pain medicine that was completely useless and unnecessary because it had no affect. The doctor sat down next to me and we spoke in hindi a little but I was too nervous to say too much outside of the basics. Then the doctor grabbed my hand and the nurse my elbow. He kindly told me to look away. What type of fucking painkiller is that?!? Look away?! What? There's no pain if I can't see it? I don't know about you doc, but are you shitting me! I wasn't so calm anymore. I waited as they held both sides of my arm because there were now two sides! I waited almost too long. He would tense and I would brace myself and then he would relax leaving me unsure wether to keep bracing myself or relax a little. This happened a few times before to my luck, he caught me as I started to relax. He pulled on one side and the nurse pulled on the other. My forearm muscles fought against there pull by pure reflex For the lack of anything but a cliche, fire shot through my arm. I almost passed out. Easily the worst pain in my life. I don't think the look-away painkiller did much.
I was sent home wearing a plaster cast, by way of a specialist named Dr. Bajaj. He was recommended by every expat, especially my friend who had broken his arm a month before. (His cast came off that night.) I was scheduled for a procedure that would realign my arm perfectly to be done the next day.
That day was Friday and as my sister went off to school I went off to a small little clinic where I watched James Bond on TV until the doctor arrived and I was put into a surgical gown that looked like a picnic table cloth. Shaking from fear, I was pulled into the OR on the way watching the ceiling lights pass by overhead. People in surgical masks stood around me. It took three painful tries to get the IV needle in the right spot. When it was finally in, I started to relax under the placebo the anesthesia was taking effect. Before they injected it into my IV I said drowsily What color casts do you have? Green and blue. Not wanting to having a matching cast with my friend I chose blue. It was the same color as last year. And then I woke up. It was sunday morning and I didn't want to be waking up but slowly I did and then fell back asleep. I heard my dads voice. Then I fell back asleep. Blackness clouded my eyes until I realized it wasn't Sunday morning at all but the room I had waited in before. I lay with an IV in my arm and felt drugged. Because I was. My dad swears I revealed all my secrets under the influence, but I know hes joking. I had a terrible 'hangover' the rest of the day.
The next week we went to Dharamsala and met His Holiness the Dali Lama XIV. I thought his blessings would help me, sending me on a track to healthiness. The next day I got dengue. Now, as that lasted for two solid weeks, as soon as that ended I got a significant respiratory infection with a hacking cough through the night. I am now almost over it. Whats next?
