Thursday began like any other day. It was to be one of my usual work-days, with 40 to 50 kids, and about 30 adults. It was to be a hot day so showers mixed with ice were on the menu. On the way I stopped into a 7-11 (In Mexico, OXXO) for three bags of ice, and a cup of coffee.
As I came out of the store with my coffee I stepped over the yellow marked curbing but seemed to catch my other foot in a yellow pipe below the curb.
I was now an 84 year old man, in the air falling to the asphalt below. All six feet of me. Nasty fall ... lost my coffee! Hit my head, injured my left-ankle, and really messed up my right knee tendon and quadruplex muscle. Almost like the accident I had in the Venezuelan jungle same week, twelve years before.
As I sat there on the asphalt holding my knee and thinking over the situation I realized this careless one-second incident was going to mean a temporary change in lifestyle starting immediately. Priorities rearranged. People affected.
Ernesto drove me across the border thirty miles north to Scripts Mercy hospital's Emergency unit. A couple of hefty men placed me on a stretcher and on in I went ... The pain was great, the pain shot was greater ... so I don't remember a lot of what went on. The pain killer keeps you happily stoned ... keeps, mind, soul, spirit ripped tendon and paining knee together. Hurting but happy!
The surgery would be the following night about 8pm. Going to be long night
I remember briefly meeting the cheerful O. R. doctors and personal. I remember the warm blanket they put on me. From then on things turned to an unconscious blur, a blur I had experienced many times before,
The extended two hour surgery, went well; they say. After sewing me up they placed a nice new heavy brace on my right leg, from my ankle to my upper thigh. Then they set to work making me a member by inserting more than eight different vinyl tubes in me. Being happily high I really didn't mind. In this carefree frame of mind they hauled me up to my new, technology sophisticated room. Many of you who know me, know how well I get along with technology. Imposing black machines that never sleep towering over me, with their little red, yellow and blue flickering lights uttering groans, buzzes and beeps at inappropriate times.
Because I couldn't walk I had to call a nurse to help me or watch me do anything, even swallow a pill. Day and night they would walk in and out of your life; if sleeping, ,wake you up, and check if you were sleeping and then if your heart was pumping.
Well, thanks to my Niece and her expertise on Hospital procedure, I'm home again ... beginning life as a brand new cripple. Lots of new stuff to re-learn from twelve years before.
I'm home free! ... thanks to the many of you who prayed me through this ... unpleasant venture. Conclusion, no surgery is pleasant at 84.
