You know, I am not even going to bother trying to find a clever title for this post. There is nothing clever about my situation and besides, I am too pissed off.
So yeah, I broke my hip September 24th, as evidenced here. As y’all can imagine, breaking one’s hip is not fun. It is actually quite traumatic not to mention very, very painful. And going through this a second time does not really make it any easier. Well, except maybe for being able to deal more adequately with the amazing amount of bureaucracy one has to contend with despite being in a rather bad way.
Of course, on a personal level, this whole thing has me stressed out because it has, once again, put my life on hold. Besides the inescapable fact that I have a lot of work to do, the truth is things were finally starting to make sense for me. I felt like, four years after breaking my hip the first time, things had finally, for the most part, gotten back on track (because it may not be obvious but breaking a hip is a very disruptive thing). And then BANG!, I break my hip. Again.
And I think that what makes it worse is how it happened. Now I wish I could regale you with harrowing tales of physical danger while mountain-climbing or a cool car chase ending dramatically with an SUV ramming through a store-front window or something. But no, in my case, nothing so spectacular or even interesting. Nope. In my case, swear to gawd, my hip broke for no reason at all. No warning signs, no pain, no falling down, no bumping myself or something. Nothing. It just broke.
I mean I was just standing around at the wine store, where I had stopped while doing errands to buy wine for supper, and was chatting with another customer, explaining to her how the timer worked on the bottle-cooling machine thing and then it just happened. I felt it break. I could swear I heard it too but that might just have been an interior sound that we sort of imagine, I can not say. And the second it happened, I knew. I just knew.
So, for all sorts of reasons (like shock, pain, fear, etc.), I started screaming and sat down on the floor. The woman I was talking to ran away (what an idiot) but luckily, several members of the store’s personnel came to my aid as well as a young woman who called 911 and stayed with me until the ambulance carted me away. The store’s employees were all very nice and it really helped because to be honest, I was totally freaking out. I mean besides the excruciating pain, my mind was racing with all the implications of this really sucky event and I just could not fathom going through this a second time. Actually, I still can not imagine how I will get through this again but at the moment, I am in “one-hour-at-a-time” mode. That is the most I can do for now.
Anyway, after stabilising me and securing my leg, which at this point, had swelled up beyond recognition, the EMTs took me to what is probably one of the worst hospitals in Montreal (Jean-Talon Hospital). And if it is not one of the worst hospitals in Montreal, it should be. I have been a patient in an impressive number of hospitals in my life and I can say without reserve that this place boggles the mind. Besides the food being really the worst I have tasted, the general hygiene of the place being very poor, people constantly answering your questions with “that is not my department” and the foundation’s logo inexplicably resembling a pot leaf, the whole place just seems rather poorly organised.
I arrived at the emergency around 19h00 or something and I learned I would have to wait until the next day for surgery because, by the time they had processed me and taken some very painful x-rays, the surgeon had gone home for the day. So I spent a very long night in an overcrowded ER being tended to by people who obviously hate their jobs. And actually, I did not get into surgery until the following evening so by that time, I was in total melt-down, sleep-deprived and high on Morphine and nothing could console me except the words “you are going into surgery now”.
I have been told the surgery was very long (three and a half hours) and technically very difficult (though I have yet to know why) but that it seems to have yielded good results. After having had to remove a screw that had been left over from the previous surgery because the guy felt it was too much trouble to remove it at the time, they installed a “clou centromédullaire” (no idea how to say that in English), a kind of long rod placed inside my femur and that, in my case, follows the entire length of the bone (unfortunately, I was unable to find adequate images online but once they do more recent x-rays, I will post something on flickr).
Since then, I have just been trying to mend to the best of my abilities. I had myself moved to a private room last Sunday so that I could at least get some inadequate but welcomed sleep. I finally saw the orthopedist who operated on me almost a week later (because he works mainly in Trois-Rivières). He seems nice and his rating on Ratethisdoctor.com (or whatever it is called) is actually pretty high so that is comforting. Although, digging around on the Internet, I found out he sued his colleagues for being overworked due to scheduling practices or something. Glad I read all that after the surgery. As an added bonus, he actually took the time to answer all my questions and stuff. Orthopedists are generally not known for their communications skills so this was a refreshing change.
I think that what has been the most draining, besides dealing with a lot of nurses and orderlies who would obviously prefer to be somewhere else (although some of them are very nice, especially those working the night or graveyard shifts), is having to organise my rehab services despite stupid rules and regulations thought out by some civil servant or worse! committee with no practical clue of the real world and blindly applied by practitioners, like the idiot social worker assigned to my case. Despite my repeated requests to be transferred to the Montreal Rehabilitation Institute, where I have been a, euh, beneficiary since the age of 16 and have had all my prostheses done and stuff, he not only insisted on sending me somewhere else but refused to even submit the request to the IRM. This battle lasted all week and I actually had to get the hospital’s ombudsman involved but I prevailed and will be transferred there this coming Monday where I will likely stay for about a month or so.
I was able to deal with all this, despite my physical pain and psychological distress, because I am an old hand at advocacy, know the system pretty well and do not give up easily. But I can not help thinking of all those people who get screwed over because they just do not know how to deal with all that bureaucratic shit or have no support system or are too sick to get through it.
I would like to point out that my BFF, Alain, has been a rock through all of this. He ran to the scene of the accident and since then, has taken care of my affairs and stuff. He has been great. I am very lucky to have such a friend.
Anyway, it has been a long 10 days. Luckily, a friend brought me a laptop and a portable wifi thingy yesterday so at least I have been able to get through the astonishing amount of e-mail that had been accumulating since the accident. That definitely contributed to bringing my anxiety down somewhat. So I will be able to keep up with work, with the most important stuff at least. So far, the hospital has not given me any problem with the wifi and hopefully, the rehab center will do the same.
Tomorrow is my birthday. Happy birthday to me.