I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

So as I lay dying, I make eye contact with Judge Booty. She is looking at me with her whistle in her mouth wondering if I am getting up. It didn't take long for her to realize that I wasn't. Before I knew it Lizzie McFighter, one of the night's announcers was by my side encouraging me to cuss all I wanted. "Let it out," she said as I squeezed her hand. Next Manda Malice, our designated injury pro, was there ordering people around ("Move away!") and getting down to business ("Where does it hurt?"). I was holding my lower leg which led the EMT to start investigating my ankle. She took off my skate and started feeling around. I muttered, "It's my shin, It's my shin," as she taped my ankle.

I was in horrible pain. Like worse than 36 hours of natural childbirth pain. People started talking about me standing up and trying to walk off the rink--with assistance of course. "NO FUCKING WAY," I said. There was no way I was going to stand up. All my instincts were telling me to hold onto my leg with both hands and cuss at anyone who got near me.

The game had to go on, and I had to move, so at some point four brave souls picked me up and carried me to a chair next to the Z-Girl dugout. I looked at the chair and said, "NOOOOOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" The thought of bending my leg or having it dangle from anything did not appeal to me. The EMT promised to hold onto my ankle and they set me down.

I remember saying, "I don't feel like my leg is attached to my foot," and Manda Malice assuring me that it was. "My shin REALLY hurts," I continued.

"Pain radiates up," she said.

The EMT was feeling my ankle, saying, "It feels okay, it might just be a sprain."

"I HEARD BONES CRACK," I said clearly between cussing and moaning.

Soon Warren, my mom, my kids, my sister, and my brother (a doctor) and several other people started gathering around me to participate in the "Do you want to go to the hospital in a car or an ambulance" conversation.

"There is no way that I can get in a car," I said.

Someone started talking about Morphine and my brother stepped in close to monitor the situation. (He even held my hand--a clear indicator that he wasn't too sure if I was getting the best care possible.) I looked at him and said, "Please get me an ambulance, please. And some pain relief!"

An ambulance was called and morphine was injected. I expected to soon be comfortably numb, muttering I love you to the guy on the other end of the needle, but I wasn't. I started to sweat and hyperventilate. I knew that I looked like a total wuss and that surely people had broken their ankles with much less drama, but I was out of my mind with pain.

However, I have to say that for the few moments that Satchel and Jiro were standing next to me, I smiled calmly and said, "Mommy's okay. Everything's okay," in a way that actually reassured them. Jiro looked wide-eyed and exhausted and was happy to be led away by his cousin. Satchel held my hand and showed me the toy from his Happy Meal and generally made me feel super proud of my Big Boy.

It was around that moment that Sand Storm (who sprained her ankle in the first bout) came over and said, "You just had to outdo me, huh?" I tried to smile, but I think it probably looked like a snarl. To my left Dirty Constance was in the midst of taking my picture. I gave her the same look I gave Warren when he tried to film me in labor with Jiro and she quickly put down the camera.

Finally I was on a stretcher heading out the door. People were standing around applauding, which was nice, but it made me feel like a total loser because I was still moaning and screaming and grasping my leg while begging the EMT not to bump into my foot.

Manda Malice was still by my side with my insurance information in her hand, and I was very glad about that. They wouldn't let her ride in the back of the ambulance with me, so she sat in the front and tried to make me feel better. "You looked like a total badass out there!" she said.

"What was the final score?" I asked.

"I wasn't paying attention to the score!" she ducked. "I was too busy paying attention to you."

Meanwhile the EMT got on the horn with Methodist Germantown's ER. "Wah wah wah wah DEFORMITY wah wah wah wah," was all I heard.

"What do you mean deformity?" I asked.

"Oh the EMT on scene noted a deformity in your shin that might be a break."

I went to my happy place and tried to keep the cussing to a minimum as we flew over every bump possible along Highway 72/Poplar Avenue.

After what seemed like an eternity I was wheeled into the ER and told that I would have to wait. In a wheelchair. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I started whimpering again, thinking about my leg having to once again be jostled and dangled. "Please, please, please nooooooooo," I whimpered in my sparkly outfit, torn blue fishnets, and big bulky knee pads.

I took a break from moaning to assess the situation. I was crying in a sparkly outfit, torn blue fishnets, and big bulky knee pads in front of 30 or more people calmly waiting in Germantown at 10pm on a Saturday night to be seen by a doctor. I LOOKED LIKE A TOTAL FREAK.

Someone asked someone what was wrong with me and the reply, "She broke her leg in the roller derby," hung in the air like a thick black cloud. I'd say the general reaction to this news was horror, with maybe a small minority of people expressing quiet awe.

"Can someone get me a blanket to cover up these silver hot shorts?" I begged.

Again, I was joined by Satchel and Jiro and the rest of my family. I put on my happy face long enough to get them excited about a slumber party with their cousins which thankfully was the exact amount of time it took the radiologist to pick out the "roller derby girl with a broken leg" from the crowded room.

"I didn't think they had roller derby anymore," he said as he wheeled me back.

I didn't dignify that with a response.

"So what happened?" he asked.

"Someone hit me, I heard a crack, and I fell down," I replied.

He parked me next to the X-Ray table and said, "Okay, we just have to get you up--"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I wailed. "Please don't put me on that table. PLEASE."

He looked at his nurse and they started scrambling, trying to figure out a way to X-Ray me. Somehow they managed to just lift my leg up a bit and capture the images through my screams. I sat crying in my chair while they hustled around some more. "Let's get her a room," the radiologist said to the nurse.

"Is it broken?" I asked sadly.

"In a couple of places," he said.

Strangely this made me happy. I didn't feel like such a wuss anymore. MY LEG IS BROKEN IN TWO PLACES! Not one, but TWO. I imagined getting wheeled into a room, getting a nice little cast, some drugs, and then getting sent home...or to the after party at the Deli. A cigarette and a beer sounded really good.

Instead I was wheeled into a room and then left alone for 15 minutes. I was still in horrendous pain and still in my (what now seemed) ridiculous uniform. I looked to see if I could reach a nurse call button, but I couldn't. I started to panic. I didn't want to be left alone in my pain for another second.

"Please help me! PLEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAASE!" I cried over and over to no avail. I briefly considered taking off my knee pad and throwing it at the door. I figured it would either be a really bad throw that would only piss me off more or that it would actually result in a broken window which would not win me any fans so I left it alone and just cried.

Finally a nurse came in and tried to calm me down. "My leg is broken in two places," I said.

"Did the doctor tell you that?" she asked puzzled.

"The radiologist did," I said.

"Well we can't do anything until the doctor looks at your X-Rays," she said.

"Well where is the doctor?" I asked.

"With another patient," she said. Then another nurse-dude came in and they informed me that I had to get on the bed.

I went with my usual response to news that I needed to be moved without medication, "NOOOOOOOOOO!!"

"We have to," she said. "And then we can get your friend to come back and sit with you."

I sniffled in a most pathetic way as they heaved me on the bed. "Hold my leg! Please GOD hold my leg!" I really can't believe I didn't die or just pass out from all of the pain I endured up to that moment.

"I'm sorry," the nurse said disingenuously as the nurse-dude looked at me with scorn.

"Get Manda!" I said as she rushed out.

"I can't find her," she said, scared, a couple of minutes later.

"Then get my husband! He's Asian. You can't miss him!" I demanded.

I was soon joined by Warren and my mommy and they said all sorts of nice things to me while we waited for the doctor to come in and inform me that I had a "pretty nasty" break in my tibia and a "pretty normal" break in my fibula and that he was pretty sure that I was going to need surgery. On Monday. When an orthopedist would be in.

Surgery.

Monday.

Great.

"We can give you some pain medication and a splint and you can either go home and wait or get a room and wait."

I looked at Warren and my mom and thought about getting in and out of the car and in and out of bed and on and off the toilet and on and off the sofa with two wild monkeys running around and said, "Can I just get a room?"

"Of course," they said thankfully.

It was 1am and we were all exhausted. I sent them home and assured them that I would be fine. By 2am the scornful nurse-dude and his grouchy helper had wrangled me into a splint, highly medicated me, and turned me over to Linda and Lolita in the ortho ward.

Lolita got me undressed and helped me onto a bedpan. Linda said, "They have you down for pain meds every six hours, but we're going to have to change it because (nodding to my leg) you broke that."

"In TWO places."

Photo compliments of Shannon Dixon