Thankfully, it's not yet winter; snow hasn't begun to fall, nor has ice yet covered the sidewalks and streets. My hope is that, before winter gets to Hartford, with its precipitation and other un-fun stuff, my ankle will have healed and it will no longer be in a splint.
A week and a half back, on Saturday, 16 October, I managed to fracture my right ankle. I'd gone grocery shopping at a new -- to me -- semi-neighborhood grocery store, Shop-Rite; I was bringing home 4 cases of seltzer, some gluten-free pasta, gluten-free hot cereal, & I've-forgotten-what-else on my electric wheelchair. Somehow, I managed to hyper-extend my ankle while using my foot to prop open the door that separates the inside from the outside hallway on the bottom floor.
It was a freak accident; people look at me funny when I try to explain how it happened. Then again, I'm famous for freak accidents -- I fractured my right wrist when I shifted my balance to avoid stepping on my younger cat, Geoffrey; I fractured my right acetabulum--a bone in the hip that is impossible to fracture unless one has been in a motorcycle or serious auto accident, neither of which has ever happened to me; in high school, I damaged my larynx by hitting it against a stairway railing when I fell going UPSTAIRS; in grade school gym class, I did a series of deep knee bends--until one of my knees wouldn't unbend, & my mother had to come get me, hop me home, & phone the doctor. Doctors made house calls back in the late 1950's & early 1960's, so he came to see me. He didn't know what happened, so he told my mother to put a pillow under my knee & let the joint unbend on its own. It did, over the next 12 hours. You get the picture. Freak accidents.
So now I'm stumbling around in a splint that goes from my toes to my knee; it shows only a small amount of the swelling that built up in the week prior to getting the splint put on. See, since I could walk on the leg / ankle / foot, I decided that the ankle was sprained, not broken. So I put an ace bandage on it & went about my week. The week included a visit to my doctor on Thursday; he took one look & ordered an x-ray. The x-ray showed a fracture, & I spent most of the next day in the ER at Saint Francis Hospital waiting for someone to decide what to do about my ankle and trying to remember where all of the paperwork I'll need is so that I'll be able to apply for Medicaid.
Spending time in the ER proved to be quite instructive. I learned that most ER personnel -- doctors, nurses, intake people, etc. -- do not know that, when someone has been approved for Social Security Disability, that person is not eligible for Medicare coverage for two years. Seems crazy, no? Someone -- in this case, moi -- has been determined to have physical and / or mental problems serious enough that she / he is disabled. At the same time, she / he has no coverage for those medical and / or emotional problems that disabled her / him. The ER personnel at Saint Francis certainly thought it was crazy. So crazy that they didn't refuse to treat me. Only heaven knows what I'll owe the hospital, doctors, etc.
So now, I'm supposed to spend most of my time on bed with my right leg elevated on 2 or 3 pillows. I'm there as often as I'm able to be, but it's difficult since I live alone with 2 cats who don't quite understand "That's where I need to put my foot, sweetie." The splint is heavy, my ankle still hurts, & I'm not sleeping all that well. So I tend to doze off often, & not just when I'm on bed. Once it happened while I was washing dishes in the kitchen. The water felt so nice & warm on my hands....
I am getting lots of reading done, since I'd been to the library last week & had checked out a whole raft of books. I also have some magazines, some of which are current & others several months old that I've never read. I figure that whatever they show for fashion should be on sale by now. Not that I'll be able to race out to get it...
The furthest I've gone since getting the splint is a 1/2 block, to Walgreens for some frozen fruit bars & other various snack food. Tomorrow I'll be going to my mother's (4 blocks away), & on Thursday, to West Hartford Center & Blue Back Square. Then Friday, it's back to the doctor to find out what comes next. I hope she / he will tell me that surgery doesn't make sense.
Whatever happens, I'm NOT going to miss voting this coming Tuesday. So far, Richard Blumenthal is maintaining a double-digit lead over Linda McMahon, but it's not a big enough double-digit lead for me to feel comfortable. The Democratic candidate for governor has an even smaller lead over his Republican opponent.
This is a crucial election, friends. We all need to get out to vote in a show of force and reason against the Tea Partyites & other such right-wingers. It has become really ugly out there. Rand Paul supporters beat up an opponent, putting her in the hospital with a concussion. The Republican candidate for governor in New York State, Carl Paladino, has said he'll use eminent domain to prevent the building & development of an Islamic Center at Park51 in Manhattan. And there's more, & much of it is pretty awful.
Our weapons are our voices, our votes, for those among you who are religious / spiritual, our prayers and appeals to the Most High, and, finally, hard as it is -- and it is hard, I know -- our love. Love for one another isn't hard. Love for those whom we oppose is. As someone who has been strongly influenced by Jesus, Gandhi-ji, Martin Luther King, Thomas Merton, Robert McAfee Brown, and Joan Baez, I believe that we must try. Will we succeed? I'm not going to predict, although I know myself well enough to know I'll have lots of work to do when it comes to loving Linda McMahon, let alone Karl Rove. However, I do believe that we are called upon to try to love them. Or at least attempt to try to love them. That doesn't mean agree with them. Instead, it could mean backing off from our own anger, frustration, rage, & disgust that have built up as this election campaign has gone on & on & on. If nothing else, backing off will help us prevent burn-out & make us more able to keep on keepin' on for the long road ahead. G-D Bless & Much Shalom!
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