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.

The verdict so far is good: “[Dr. X] got a lot of white stuff out. You’re having a cellular response on your cornea. There’s no growth on your culture so far. We’re not out of the woods yet.”

TRANSLATION: There’s no sign of significant infection on my cornea, although the doc was still talking about my “potential infection”. The cultures of the “white stuff” haven’t grown, although they normally allow 24 hours before they make a verdict. The “cellular response” is some basic swelling of my cornea from the injury plus my body sending cells to repair and fight infection. Things are looking up and Dr. K is not saying scary things like yesterday, but there’s still some possibility for infection to present itself.

I am really thankful for the prayers and phonecalls from everyone!

This morning I showed up at 10:40 at the Emory Eye Clinic. I finally saw the main doctor around noon. He spent a rather long time looking through the slit-lamp at my eye. (That’s the machine where they shine really bright white or violet light onto your eye from the side and look at you straight on.) He kept saying, “Mm.” Or “Look up… Mm.” Then he’d write something down. He asked his assistant for a “Point 2 and a point 3…no just a point 3.” The point 3 was a 0.3 mm tweezer to rip off the scabs from my eyelids to check for more thorn-fragments … ouch!

But the real reason why he kept saying “Mm,” was “You have a thorn in your cornea.”

What? That clear part of my eye that I look through has a thorn imbedded in it?

I tried to get a lot of info out of the doc, but he was pretty concerned about the situation and didn’t give me much:

Me – “What are the vision implications of this?”
Him – “There are possibly some implications… it doesn’t go all the way through your cornea. We’ll have to take a stain.”
Me – “What’s a stain?”
[... lots of ADD-type activity where the doc was going out of the room and using medi-speak with his peers ...]
Doc – “You need to go to Dr. X at the main Emory campus. She’ll dig out the thorn and take a stain and a culture.”
My brain – [to itself] “Did he just say she’s going to “dig” a thorn out of my eye?”
My mouth – [to the doc] “Is there some kind of infection?”
Doc – “If it’s bacterial, we can just treat it with antibiotics. But it might be fungal.”
Me – “What if it’s fungal?”.
Doc – “Go to the Emory hospital, 4th floor, Dr. X is expecting you. She’ll dig it out.”
My brain – “He said dig again!”
Doc continues – “There’s an O.R. there just in case. Do not stop for lunch. Go now.”
Me – “Not even for McDonalds drive through?”
Doc – “No, just go now.”
My Brain – “Dude, this sounds really bad.”
My Brain again – “Dude, did he say O.R.?”

As I was thinking about this, I had to stop to pay the copay. It took about as long as a McDonald’s drive-through. That’s why he didn’t want me to stop for lunch. I had to buy his lunch! Seriously, though, the Doc was nice but harried and hurried and concerned, a fact that concerned me!

They gave me a copy of my “chart” and I drove to Emory without stopping for lunch.

Dr. X was really nice. She explained in much more detail that I had a scratch and a “foreign body” in my cornea, not too deep (the chart said something like “FB 40%”) and she was going to scrape off the outer layers of my cornea and try and get the white stuff out (which I imagine must be ocular pus) and see if it’s bacterial or fungal. She was going to try to remove the foreign body too.

With that, she put some numbing drops in and put this really maddening thing on my eye that kept me from being able to blink. She muttered something about “gravy for the brain…” (watch the movie Conspiracy Theory for the reference).

Anyway, it was pretty uncomfortable to watch her use this small-blade-of-the-pocketknife thingy to scrape my cornea. She took some of the “white stuff” from my eye and put it in peitree dishes. Then she scraped some more and said, “Now I’m going to try to get the foreign body out…” She got another tool that looked a little like a straightpin and started prying against something buried in my cornea. A couple times she moved my eye sideways with her prying force before the pin made a very small popping noise and came loose! After about 5 tries, she finally got it. “I have removed a brown foreign body from your cornea,” she said with her northern-Germany accent.

It was not fun.

The best part was when she took off the eye-keeper-open-er off my eye.

I’m taking antibiotic drops every hour and going back tomorrow to see the first Doc.

The good news is that the thorn and subsequent corneal scraping were way down at the bottom of my cornea, out of my field of view, and there should be no vision implications. Unless, I guess, they can’t kill the potential mushroom growing in my cornea!