A Broken Wrist, Part 2

 

It was the small bone on the outside that was broken. That one is really hard to heal.

“What will that procedure be like?” I asked, all the while wondering how much it would cost.

“I need to admit you to the hospital. You’ll probably be there for two days to have the operation and recover.”

My face fell, and I was close to tears. “We have four little children and we only have campus insurance. I don’t know how we can afford this. Isn’t there another way to fix this?”

He looked at the X-rays again, then at my unmarked hand. “I could try something, but the chances are low that it will work. I’ll push the bones together very carefully, and but a cast on it. You come back in two days and if it’s still in place, you’ll probably be healing all right. If it has moved you need to have that operation right away. You wait here. I’ll be back in a while with the things I’ll need.”

He left and Ken and I stared at each other. I saw the worry and pain in his face, and I’m sure he saw the same in mine.

“Could you give me a blessing?” I asked. “I want to put this into God’s hands.”

My husband, a former bishop in the LDS church, nodded. “I think I can do that.”

He put his hands on my head and was quiet for a while, then he spoke, assuring me that God loved me and that he was mindful of me.

I felt better already.

Ken went on, telling me that God knew my heart and that my wrist would heal fine without further need of help from the doctors or hospital.

I cried when he was finished, and he looked at me with a peaceful expression in his eyes. “I don’t remember,” he said. “What did I say during the blessing?”

I told him, and he smiled. “I often don’t know what I say when I give a blessing. That’s when I feel that God speaks through me.”

At that moment the doctor returned and very slowly and carefully set my wrist.

I went back two days later and had another X-ray. The bone was already healing, and it was still exactly in place. The doctor smiled, shook my good hand and send me home to come back six weeks later to take off the cast.

Six weeks later the cast came off and my hand was weak, but functional.

The tooth, however we had to pay for, but blessedly, we had that much money.

A Broken Wrist

This happened to me many years ago. You who are students out there, can still sympathize though. Enjoy the story!

 This is Karolina Kurkova riding her bike. I'm sure I didn't look that pretty!

My husband and I were both graduate students and had four young children at home. We were riding our bikes wherever we could to save money and get through school as soon as possible.

One day rode my bike down a steep street, checking ahead and seeing a green light. It looked like an easy crossing so I let the bike pick up speed on the incline, as suddenly two female students stepped into the road without checking for the go-ahead light for pedestrians, and without checking if the road I was on was clear. I slammed onto the brakes, trying to avoid the girls and managed to do so, but in the process I lost control of the bike and slid to a hard crash. Stunned, I lay on the ground. Eventual the campus police and the ambulance arrived. I assured the EMTs that I was fine, but they insisted on checking me, found I had broken part of my front tooth, and had an either sprained or broken wrist.

The police had alerted my husband, and he arrived before the EMTs could take me to the hospital. My husband assured them he’d take me to the campus doctor right away, so we wouldn’t have to pay the extra money for the ambulance. The doctor X-rayed my wrist and told me the small bone was broken, and he couldn’t do anything for me, but would refer me to a specialist.

We knew this would be costly, but we really didn’t have a choice, so we went to see the specialist. Eventually, we would also have to fix my tooth, since I was a teaching assistant, and didn’t think I should teach undergrad classes with a missing tooth. I felt better after we talked it over in the car on our way to the specialist and decided to use our meager savings.

The new doctor looked at the X-ray we had taken with us, shook his head and said, “This is a bad break. You need to have a metal pin to keep the two parts of the bone together until they knit.”

Check in tomorrow for the ending!