- My wife's torn ACL
- Danny's gruesome broken leg
- Organic Chemistry
Today, we're going for an MRI to determine the extent of the damage to the ligaments. The doctor said that even if the ACL is completely torn, she'd wait until the MCL had healed before doing surgery on the ACL. This way, the recovery might be faster because the body will be healing from the surgery instead of surgery plus additional ligament damage. Anywho, it sort of sounds as though surgery is a likely outcome.
One of the best parts of the ordeal is that while I'm busting my hump yesterday studying for my Orgo test, the MRI imaging service calls to tell us that we'll need to pay $550 out of pocket for the MRI because our insurance won't cover it because it's a "pre-existing" condition.
"Huh?," I ask. "Pre-existing? From when, a week and a half ago?"
"Just telling you what they said, sir," the voice on the phone told me.
"Seriously, they realize that this is the result of an injury that we reported a week ago, right?"
"I don't know, sir. All I know is that they denied payment for a code of 'pre-existing condition.'"
"Fantastic."
Anywho, here's what a $550 MRI scan will get you:
Although I'm no doctor, comparing this imagewith info on the internets
leads me to believe her ACL is busted.
O' Danny Boy
My boy Danny went home from the hospital the other day and now starts the road to recovery with his leg. Honestly, I've been haunted by the very thought of being injured so badly. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain. Stories from the field (the softball field) keep rolling in, each with a different take on how bad the situation was:
- J3K told me that the sound of the bones snapping sounded like a gunshot that he clearly heard in the outfield. At the sound, coupled with Dan's awful moaning and screaming, he immediately ran infield.
- Danny recounting that he heard and felt his leg snap. After falling to the ground, he reached to grab his leg and it just flopped around ... not at the joint or anything but in the middle of his shin.
- A teammate in our dugout passed out as a result of the sights and sounds of the ordeal. She fell and hit her head really good. She's OK.
- Keith, the guy who, in my absence, is playing shortstop, has remarked that if his throw to home was off (instead of a laser-precise bullet), Dan wouldn't have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
- PJ2k7 (aka Dokken) said that the first paramedic to arrive thought he was responding to a "possible fracture" call. Evidently, the phrase "the bones are sticking out of his shin" didn't translate into a for-the-love-of-God-please-hurry-your-ass-up response call. He arrived at the field and meandered up to the scene where he quickly realized that he was unprepared. Think Brody in Jaws when he sees the shark and says, "We're going to need a bigger boat."
- Because they paramedics didn't think they were responding to a high priority call, they didn't bring a fully stocked ambulance. Danny keeps recalling the complete lack of any kind of pain medication until after he reached the hospital. His story about being in the ambulance as it drove off the field, evidently hitting every single bump possible, makes me wince.
- The surgeon described the approach of implanting the metal rods in Danny's legs. Noting, of course, that he would first thoroughly clean the bones to rid them of the dirt from the softball field. (?!?)
Orgo-asm
I took a big Organic Chemistry test this week. I did my best to study my ass off for it. Honestly, it was a welcome distraction from all the health issues. As usual, it was tough.
One of the questions dealt with synthesizing a tri-substituted benzene ring. For my answer, I drew SpongeBob. In really big, block letters, I wrote his name under it. It was all done in crayon. I think I wrote the "S" backwards.
Right when I was finishing, my arm shattered, sending my bone and blood all over the desk.
Absorbent and yellow and porous is he.(And able to synthesize benzene with glee.)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment