The Diagonsis

We arrive at Mission Hospital emergency room. They transfer me to a wheelchair. Surprisingly, the emergency room is not busy and we are seen and admitted within an hour. I am in good spirits. I don't feel too bad. I didn't have any broken bones sticking out and everything seemed to be in the right place. I am optimistic that I might get out of here.

They send me down for x-rays of my right hip. It hurts like a mother to get from the wheelchair onto the x-ray machine. The techs don't seem too concerned as first since I am not in a lot of pain. They gingerly move me up onto the x-ray table. After the first set of x-rays the tech tells me that they look fine. They take another set and then he tells me that he thinks he saw something but he can't tell me. They get serious all of a sudden and tell me they are going to move me onto a hospital bed using a straight board to transfer me. I let out a couple of screams as they move me from the x-ray machine to the bed and I now know that I did something more serious that bruise my bone. They wheel me back to see the emergency room doctor.

The doctor comes in and asks to talk to my wife outside. Now I'm begining to get worried. Am I gonna be paralyzed or something? They come back after a few minutes. I glance at my wife and she has a worried and scared look on her face. The doctor doesn't say much except he wants to do a CAT scan of my hip. So they wheel me down to the CAT scan room and do the scans. They transfer on my back from the bed to the CAT scan machine. Fortunately, it isn't too painful since I can lay on my back. They finish the CAT scans and wheel me back again to the doctor.

My wife doesn't want to tell me what she and the doctor discussed so that worries me. After about 20 minutes the doctor comes in after looking at the CAT scans and tells me the bad new and good news. The bad news is I fractured my right hip in two spots and I will probably need surgery to fix it. The good news is the fracture was not dislocated or total broken, which is worse and harder to fix. They call my orthopedic surgeon who visits me and tells me that while I don't need surgery -- they could put me in a full body cast for five weeks -- it is better to have surgery and place some screws in my hip to help it heal properly. He tells me they willl try to schedule the surgery for Tuesday. The problem is he has nine other surgeries ahead of me. I don't know if that is good or bad being number ten. "Do you want a doctor operating on you after a long day of surgery?" I ask myself. It doesn't look promising, but at this point I just roll with it.