Sidelined by Broken Wrists – Part 1

Sidelined by broken wrists – Part 1

October 13, 2012:

I was at the annual Organization for the Study of Communication, Language and Gender Conference in Tacoma, WA, October 13, 2012. Earlier that day, I had been awarded the OSCLG Teacher/Mentor Award (to be honest, an award I had coveted my entire professional career). The evening event for our conference was a dance and karaoke party on the University of Puget Sound’s campus. I had purchased and shipped glass for family and friends that day at the glass museum and had dinner with wonderful friends.

At the dance party, I was in line to sing karaoke and dancing to a Madonna song with some friends. A friend came up and decided to spin me. At the height of the spin when I was backwards, she pulled her hand from mine and I went sailing backward, off the small dance floor, went airborne and put my hands behind me to catch myself as I fell. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.)

When I landed, it hurt, a lot, but I wasn’t thinking about my wrists. My first comment to my friend as she apologized and pulled me up by my hands from the floor was “Oh my God! I fell on my ass in front of the Foss sisters!” (top scholars in my discipline). Then I realized that I was really hurt. I turned white and my friend helped me to a chair. I had never felt pain like the pain that was emanating from my hands (that was how I identified it at that point).

I laid my head on the table and asked for ice. My friend got me a large pack of ice and I rested my wrists and hands on it. The pain was getting worse. I asked for more ice to put on top of my hands.  She brought me a smaller bag and I cried as she put it on my hands. It was excruciating. She knelt down next to me and asked, “Do we need to get you to the emergency room?”  I nodded yes and said “But there’s no way I can walk”.

Another friend got a van and 4 friends lifted the chair I was in to carry me to the van. I adopted what was to become a familiar pose over the next several months, my hands pointing upward and across my chest. At the hospital, the nurse who met our van at the emergency room asked, “Was there alcohol involved?” I quipped, “Clearly not enough”. She said, “Good, you have a sense of humor.”

As we sat in the waiting room, my two friends and I, I kept joking about hurting my wrists dancing. That became a pretty popular story that evening in the ER. Through the pain, there was a lot of laughter. When we were finally led back to the examination room, I realized that my fingers were swelling. “Oh my gosh! We have to get my rings off”, I exclaimed. “I’ll cry if they have to cut them off”. All of my rings have stories and are very meaningful to me. My friend took them off and put them in her purse. It was an evening full of waiting, but I was fully present. My friends and I talked and laughed and then one of them would disappear for a while to call and update our friends at the conference about my progress. I don’t know why, but I kept making people laugh. I don’t normally think I’m especially funny, but that night, I guess I was. One of my friends told me the next year at the conference that the nurses told her: “Your mom is a hoot!” She thought I might be offended the nurse thought I was her mom. I’m wasn’t, of course, she’s tall, gorgeous and looks like a model.  I was far from offended. 🙂

We spent from roughly 9:30 p.m. until 3 a.m. in the emergency room. The verdict, a bilateral fracture of my left wrist, a trilateral fracture of my right wrist. After they gave me major pain pills, which they held off on doing until they were sure I didn’t need surgery, they splinted my wrists and put me in slings, my arms across my chest. We went back to the hotel so I could rest a bit before my flight.

My friends tried to get ahold of my graduate students. I was at the conference with 2 of them. We were to leave the next morning for home and had to be at the airport by 6 a.m. for our flight. My friend wanted me to stay with her in Tacoma, but I knew I’d rest better at home, so I declined. After all, I had 2 students with me to assist. What could go wrong?!