Today I went to Dr. O’Connor. He’s up in Greenpoint.
Greenpoint is a lot like central-eastern Europe. Everywhere — and I mean everywhere — people were speaking Polish. The receptionists and nurses all spoke Polish to each other. At the nice bakery where I got a little pastry, it seemed like a stretch for them to speak English. It was like having an extremely short European vacation in my back yard, without jetlag or sightseeing.
Instead of sightseeing, I was showing the doc my arm. He took off the cast and poked and squoze and twisted and bent every part of my arm to find out what hurt a little and what produced eye-watering whimpering sounds. After 2 days in a cast, it was amazing how much more range of motion I had in my elbow.
After he had manipulated my arm enough he said, "OK, I’m going to have them re-take the x-rays." He sent me out to a different part of his office for x-rays. A really big, quiet, slightly hunched guy came to the waiting area and said in a quiet but slightly menacing Polish voice "Dishman?" I followed him. He needed to take images of 3 perspectives of my elbow. 2 Of them were extreeeeemly painful. Fortunately, he was quick.
After 20 minutes or so, the doc called me in to talk about the x-rays. He put them up on the lightboard as I walked in and hmm’d for a minute or two. Then he explained how the humorous, radius and ulna all come together in the elbow. He used my good arm to show me how all wrist rotations really are a rotation of the radius at the elbow joint. He said he couldn’t exactly see the fracture, but he was pretty sure I had a radial head fracture (gross but cool pictures). When he leaned back in his chair he said, "Ahhh, now I can see it," and showed me where my bone is broken. I guess he had to get out of the trees of arm-bones to see the fractured forest. (Sorry, Vicodin-inspired commentary). Anyway, my radius is fractured but not displaced. That’s good. He told me that in most elbow fractures some mobility of the eblow is permanently lost, but I could minimize that or possibly completely avoid it. First, I need to not be in a cast. I need to make sure the joint doesn’t freeze up and I need to be extending it as much as I can palm-up. Right now, the straightest I can get it is about a 45 degree bend. Second, the doc prescribed physical therapy for me. I am to come back in 3 weeks for a follow-up visit, which luckily is Friday the 13th of January. It sounded like there’s at least some possibility of returning to full use of my arm 3 weeks from now instead of the 6-8 that the ER doc told me, although the doc didn’t actually say that. Since I’m going to be moving my arm more, he also prescribed more Vicodin, although I haven’t taken too much of the first prescription.
I spent the rest of today trying to get the police report from my accident. At the scene, the police gave me their precinct’s phone number and told me to just call and they’d give me the accident report. So far, the report can’t be found. The report lady at the precinct told me she needed more information like the officer’s name. I only took the info the officers told me — which didn’t include their names. The lady at the precinct told me I might be able to get the infomation out of the Ambulance Call Report. I spent the rest of the day going to the place where you can get that report, leaving that place to get a letter notarized 10 blocks away, getting harrassed by cops while walking back to the place to hand in my notarized letter, and then pleading the mercy of the court to just accept my $1.50 in cash since they said in fine print somewhere they needed a money order. After they finally allowed me to pay cash, they told me the guy who does the reports won’t be in until Tuesday … come back then.
And they wonder why people in beauracracies go postal.
So maybe next week sometime I can get the guy to mail the report to me. Hopefully, when I get home in January I can get the police report and start talking to insurance companies about how much they’re going to have to pay my doctors and me.
I almost think a snowball or thorn in the eye are less stress than this.
Almost.
