Like Being Inside a Jackson Pollock Painting
adventures with a trimalleolar fracture of the right ankle
I’ve spent the afternoon reading the SCC decisions of a few famous BC First Nations land claims cases. I have a bunch of Aboriginal constitutional and land claim legalese buzzing in my head like a swarm of bees. I think we all need a break from that stuff. So, I’m gonna serve readers some lighter fare this evening.
artwork: Number 1 (Lavender Mist) by Jackson Pollock, 1950
I had just finished an appointment with a respiratory doctor for my now in remission asthma. I took the elevator from the third floor to the ground level and wiped out. I missed the 3 stairs and wiped out. I remember the date, because one doesn’t forget these things, and because Charlie Kirk had just been shot. I hit the ground hard.
Instantly felt something very wrong. I could barely walk on my right ankle. I hobbled to the chair a few feet away. Feeling like a stunned cartoon character, I sat there for a minute of two, trying to figure out what to do. This wasn’t in my bucket list, reader.
A lady walked out of the elevator and I asked her to go to the third floor doctor’s office and tell the receptionist to come down. The receptionist took a look at my ankle and called 911, she stayed with me until the paramedics arrived. Scott and Jinx totally rocked. They got me in the stretcher and loaded me into the ambulance. Scott drove and Jinx rode in the back with yours truly. He gave me some Motrin and Tylenol to take the edge off of the excruciating pain. Damn, it fcuking hurt … like, it hurt A LOT.
When we arrived at VGH we spent a few minutes in the waiting room of the ER, before wheeling me to an examination room for orthopaedic things. The nurse came and then eventually the doc came. Somewhere in there I had an X-ray with X-ray tech Ray and his student Michael. It didn’t take long after I returned to the examination room that the doctor came back.
“So, it hurts a lot, huh?”
“Yeah. Is it broken.”
“Yeah. You have a trimalleolar fracture.”
Ankle broken in three places. It sounded bad. I had an unstable fracture. I needed surgery. First they needed to set the bones back into place. I would need heavy drugs for that.
In the midst of all that I hadn’t gone to the loo in many hours. My bladder felt like it would burst. Bedpans aren’t fun and when you feel desperate they’ll do, reader. I’d helped many a patient with a bedpan as a ward nurse in an ortho unit and never had a clue what it felt like. Nature calls, no matter how awkward. Those netted underwear they give you seem weird at first.
A crew of people came to do the conscious sedation so the docs could set my ankle bones into place. They cut up my favourite leggings off of me. They also cut my knickers off. Sigh. That wasn’t on my bucket list either, reader. This would cost me, ugh. Also I loved those leggings. 😤
Special K ain’t just a breakfast cereal, reader. LOL. They gave me an IV drip and they stuck some ketamine and propofol in the line. They slapped some EKG leads on me and the blood pressure cuff and the O2 sat clip. All rigged up like a true science experiment! It didn’t take long before I felt high and tripping as fcuk.
The room felt like it got longer. I could see them fussing with my ankle and yet it looked fuzzy. It felt like being inside a Jackson Pollock painting, and seeing the world around me through that abstract artistry. I focussed on my breathing. I just kept listening to my breathing. I felt nothing. I had no idea what they were doing.
Dr. Kerami told me he thought I handled it well, and I told him in my slurred speech I’ll bet you tell all your patients that. Kerami denied it. It was over soon. Or maybe the drugs distorted my sense of time and it took longer than I thought. I don’t know. How long does it to set an ankle broken in three places and then put a gutter plaster cast and secure it with a tensor bandage? Somewhere in there Robert arrived and I remember them telling him instructions for post conscious sedation care.
The paramedics and ER staff all totally rocked. Except for nurse rachet at the end, who roused me from my ketamine-propofol stupor to kick me to the curb and get the fcuk out of the recovery room they’d put me in and send me home. Mister Uber took us home. I slept soundly. I would wait for them to call me for surgery starting in a week.
Naturally I drove myself into a panic thinking about the surgery. The waiting sucked. I had just begun my first term of theology grad school, and felt pretty good about the fact that I had done the nerdy keener thing and finished my first assignment early. Not to brag, but I scored an A+ on that assignment.
Waiting for surgery pretty much sucked. I hate waiting. And I know it’s a kind of spiritual formation. Well, let me tell you this adventure gave me a lot of time to get my spiritual formation on, reader!
I distracted myself by watching A LOT of Amazon Prime shows. I got my BBC Select on. Watched archeology shows, history shows, and I discovered a show called Canal Boat diaries, about some English bloke who lives in his canal boat and explores the canal system. Eventually surgery day came. The surgeon scolded me because he could see from the bandage that I walked on my ankle when I wasn’t supposed to. He threatened me with an external fixation device and said I needed to behave and not walk on my ankle for 6 weeks. He put the fear of g-d in me and I listened and behaved.
Adventures in the OR
“I’m gonna be honest, it’s not optimal, being laid up in a cast with crutches and in a holding pattern, waiting on a system I cannot control. Having many things beyond my control and capacity right now feels suboptimal. It sometimes feels lousy and scary. It definitely humbles.”
The morning after surgery I had a zoom class for grad school. Still coming off the anaesthetic, I managed to make it through a group discussion about Pauline Theology, major themes in the Epistles we studied for the assignment we handed in the day before. I remember we touched on the whole topic of circumcision as covenant in the Torah and we connected it to Paul’s application of the word circumcision in one of his letters, where he describes an inner transformation.
So fast forward 6 weeks and I got the green light to start walking again. We don’t realise all modifications we need to make when we have to do things with one leg. Showering, carrying a drink, feeding the cats, picking an Amazon package up from outside your apartment door. It instilled in me a sense of gratitude for stuff I haven’t given much thought.
It will be a while before I can climb these stairs that lead from my co-op complex to Marine Drive, the main drag where the buses operate.
Anyway. That’s my adventure with a trimalleolar fracture of the right ankle.
I’ll leave readers with some sound advice.
Maybe you can unplug and let go of all the rage baiting and fear mongering that’s whirling around you like a witch’s wind. Maybe you don’t need to respond to the week’s political drama or whatever other dramatic discourse has got people excited and worked up. Maybe when a story or a social media post evokes a strong feeling in you such as anger, well, maybe that’s the intent. Maybe engagement farmers are rage baiting you. Maybe nihilists are trying to drive you toward terminal despair.
Maybe some stuff doesn’t need a response. Maybe you can choose a healthy and fruitful response—to say nothing and move on and let it go. You don’t need to weigh in on everything, your social media outrage and despair add nothing constructive. Boosting misinformation and helping propagandists cash in on social media monetisation contributes to the chaos.