Laying in the now heated ambulance was almost more than I could take. Tyler, my personal paramedic, worked hard to find a vein while I did my best to assure him that the pain was only excruciating. I could tell he felt enormous pressure; with a patient in what is clearly a dead ambulance, it must have seemed a situation from his nightmares.
Within moments, I felt the small sting of the needle as he expertly slid it into my arm. Suddenly, I found myself struggling to breathe and the heat rising in the rescue vehicle wasn't helping matters. Sensing my distress, Tyler gently touched my shoulder and said, "Give it a minute. It's morphine."
I gave it a minute and then suddenly found my head floating above the house.
I should mention the broken tile to the Bald Avenger when I get back to earth, I thought to myself, as if it was completely normal for me to be disembodied on a Tuesday in June.
When Tyler adjusted my leg on the stretcher, I felt myself pulled roughly back into the oven of an ambulance and immediately thought, Oh Father in heaven, please tell me I shaved my legs!
Attempting to reach down to check on the status of the fur on my legs, I realized suddenly that I couldn't move without mind-numbing pain. I couldn't move my hips or my legs. I could wiggle my toes which I did constantly to remind myself I wasn't paralyzed. It helped but it didn't keep the fear totally at bay.
Feeling sloshy upstairs, I began to listen the Big Guy, who was standing outside the ambulance carrying on a conversation with the younger EMT.
"Yeah, I just graduated from there. Pretty happy to get out of high school. Thinking about joining the Army," the Big Guy was saying.
"My mom works in the front office up there. I bet our moms know each other," the blond EMT responded.
Frick frick frick! Somebody knows someone who might know me and right now, I'm drooling!
Thankfully, I heard the wail of the siren of the approaching ambulance on its way to replace the one I was currently boiling in. Within moments, I was hurriedly being jostled from one vehicle to the next, clearly no longer floating but in that pleasant place between pain and oblivion.
Because my injury wasn't life threatening, I didn't get the sirens to the hospital. I also found out later from the Butterbean, I didn't get lights either. I was merely a passenger in a red and white van. There was no special feeling beyond the one the morphine was providing on a drip-by-drip basis.
Arriving at the hospital, I was met by the Bald Avenger and the Butterbean, looking a bit panicked. The Bald Avenger more so. Later, when things calmed down and we were alone in the hallway my bed was left in (really), he leaned over with tears in his eyes and said, "Please, you've got to be more careful. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you."
"You'd fix the tile on the roof over Butterbean's room," I drowsily replied.
Perplexed, he hugged me close and kissed my forehead.
After an X-Ray and several more hours of being ignored in the hallway, I was discharged with the diagnosis of a "bruised tailbone" and a couple of admonitions to take it easy for a couple of weeks.
We knew this wasn't the case but headed home hoping that maybe we were wrong. We weren't.
Another hospital visit the next day and finally, complications from medications sent me to the hospital two weeks later only to discover that I had actually fractured the T11 and T12 in my thoracic spine. In total, I would go on to fracture three more over the next couple of months.
While I can find a considerable amount humor in my situation (now), a healthy vitamin D level could have prevented it all. We as women are bombarded with information regarding the need for calcium, but we hear almost nothing about Vitamin D. A healthy vitamin D level is usually between 22 and 50 (google this to make sure) and mine was 12. Praise God I didn't break anything else that day!
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