I’ve been
experiencing a lot of “déjà vu” moments lately. You see, I’ve been limping
around these past couple weeks because my right leg keeps making a snapping sound
whenever I twist my body. And when it makes that sound, I make a sound similar
to that of someone who accidentally got in the way of the branding iron at a
cattle ranch…because it hurts…really hurts.
So I’ve been
doing what I usually do when I have a problem like this – I try to ignore it
and keep telling myself it will go away. In this case, if I walk perfectly
straight and don’t twist my body at all, the leg feels fine. I pray, however,
that if I hear a sudden noise behind me, like a loud growl, when I’m outside, I
won’t rapidly twist around to see what it is. Because if I do, my leg will snap
and I’ll end up becoming bear chow.
This isn’t the
first time this has happened to me. The last time was nearly 20 years ago when
I was shopping at Shaw’s supermarket one Saturday and reached up to get two
gallons of bottled water from a top shelf.
When I grabbed
the plastic jugs and swung them down into my cart, I felt a sharp pain shoot
down the side of my left leg.
“Just shake it
off,” I said to myself as I limped through the store. By the time I got home,
the leg felt pretty good. So the next day I walked two miles with my dogs. My leg hurt a little afterwards, but nothing unbearable. The next three days, I
also walked the dogs. And although I wouldn't admit it, the
leg became more uncomfortable each day.
By that Thursday
morning, I felt as if someone had rammed a hot corkscrew into the side of my
knee and was twisting it. Coincidentally, on that same day, my husband had to
undergo a bone scan at the hospital, so I went with him.
As I sat in the
waiting room while he was having his procedure done, my knee and calf began to
throb. When I tried to stand, to my horror, I barely could put any weight on
the leg…not without unconsciously making a noise that sounded something like “Yeeeeeaaahhhh!”
I seriously
considered heading downstairs to the hospital’s emergency room and getting the
leg checked out, but the fact that I hadn’t shaved my legs in about three
months made me decide against it. I could just picture the doctor wearing a
pith helmet and using a machete to get through the undergrowth so he could
examine my leg.
So that night
after dinner, I took a shower, shaved my legs, and put on non-holey underwear
and socks just in case I decided to go to the hospital.
At nearly midnight, my
husband yawned, stretched and said, “Well, I’m beat. I’m going to head to bed
now.”
I smiled weakly
through gritted teeth. “Um, honey? Can you do me a teeny favor first?”
“Sure, what?”
“Can you drive me
to the emergency room? I’ve been hiding my pain from you, but I can’t bear it
any more…my leg really hurts.”
The look on his sleep-deprived face told me
he was less than thrilled with the prospect of getting dressed, chauffeuring me
to the hospital in the middle of the night and sitting around watching a
roomful of strangers moan and groan for what was guaranteed to be the better
part of five hours.
Nevertheless, we
headed to the hospital.
“Well, just as a precaution, we’ll
x-ray it,” the emergency-room doctor said to me after examining my leg. “But I
don’t expect to find any surprises. Looks like a muscle strain.”
An hour later, he
had the results.
“I was wrong,” he
said. “I actually was very surprised when I saw the x-rays. You have a
fracture. I think when you twisted your body to put the water into the shopping
cart, you tore the ligament and it pulled a piece of bone out of the side of
your knee. It looks wedge-shaped on the x-ray…like a piece of pie.”
Just listening to
his description made my leg throb even harder. By the time I left the hospital
at nearly 4:00 that morning, I was wearing a stiff, bulky leg-brace from my
thigh to my calf and was armed with crutches and a bottle of prescription painkillers. The
doctor had warned me not to remove the brace for anything other than changing
my clothes and showering, per penalty of death, until I could see an orthopedic
surgeon.
I immediately
hated that brace. For one thing, the straps on it contained miles of
Velcro, so when I tried to sleep while wearing the monstrosity, the Velcro would adhere my leg to my flannel sheets. And seeing it didn’t allow me to bend my leg
at all, I couldn’t do simple things like even bend over to tie my shoelaces. 
THE TEMPORARY BRACE
...AND A TREE STARING AT ME
Four days later,
I saw an orthopedic surgeon – a young, handsome, dark-haired guy with a
dazzling smile - who looked as if he'd just stepped off the cover of a romance novel. The minute he walked into the room, not only did I forget about
my pain, I had visions of women purposely trying to break a bone or two,
just so they could have him treat them.
The surgeon
listened intently to the volume of my degrees of gasping and in which octaves, as he
manipulated my leg in various ways.
Finally he said,
“Well, you have a lateral femoral avulsion fracture and a lateral collateral
ligament sprain.”
I stared blankly
at him. I hadn’t understood a thing he’d just said other than “fracture” and
“sprain,” but it sounded terrible to me; something I figured would need
immediate, intricate, complicated, life-or-death surgery.
And I couldn’t
believe that lifting two gallons of water could have caused so much damage.
“I could put you
in a cast,” he said. “But I’m going to have you fitted for a hinged brace
instead. It bends, so that way you can still walk while you’re healing. Nothing
strenuous, of course, like trying to climb Mount Washington.”
"Then I don't need surgery?" I asked, wondering how the wedge-shaped piece of bone I'd managed to tear out would find its way back into the hole it had left behind.
He shook his head. "No, the brace should take care of it. But you'll probably have to wear it for about eight weeks."
That figured. The hottest time of the year, and I’d be parading around in a big, bulky leg brace. My husband and I always enjoyed going to Newfound Lake each summer, but I was pretty certain there would be no swimming for me that year…not unless I wanted to immediately sink to the bottom.
As it turned out,
my husband’s scan showed a torn ACL that needed knee surgery, so for a while, we both
had bad left legs. When we went somewhere together, both of us limping and
using our spiffy canes, we looked like a pair of accident victims…or members of
the World Wrestling Federation.
In fact, when my
husband first saw my second leg brace, a thick, black one with bulging hinges on each side,
he said, “Cool! Stone Cold Steve Austin wears one just like that!”
Somehow, I didn’t think Stone Cold Steve Austin had to worry about wearing pantyhose or high-heels with his brace, as I did after I received an invitation to a friend’s wedding,
So now, will I
give in and see a doctor about my current “snappy” leg problem?
Nah…I’m sure it
will heal by itself.
# # #
Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net
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