When you arrive at an ER (one that isn’t overwhelmed with cases like those on TV always are) on a gurney being pushed by paramedics you go right to a treatment area. The ER at DCMH is currently being rebuilt from scratch, so we go into the temporary treatment area. It’s not huge, and there are no separate treatment rooms, just roughly 8-foot by 8-foot curtained-off areas. I am immediately put into one, and a tech and a nurse came over and started seeing what is going on and taking my history. I think Hilary is out front registering me.
I clearly don’t have a badly broken leg, but the swelling and physical exam indicate that maybe something is chipped or broken on my patella (kneecap bone). I mentioned I couldn’t move my right leg below the knee and I’m sure that was noted, but my comment rings no bells. The patella fixation was firmly in place and would remain in place for weeks.
An aide rolls me over to an internal x-ray area right in the ER, where pair of very gentle, very competent, and very kind techs take and develop 3 or 4 shots of my knee. The process is painless, including the positioning and moving.
Digression: The x-ray process is not always so nice. While in high school I dislocated the middle finger of my right hand playing football, and because of the extreme swelling an x-ray was ordered. The x-ray techs spent a very long time positioning my hand using small sandbags. It took seemingly forever and I was left with a wrist that hurt as much as the finger. The corker was the x-rays were so blurry that it was impossible to tell whether I had a hairline fracture or not.
So the DCMH x-ray techs were great!
I get rolled back to my assigned cubie. A nice young resident comes in and shows me the films. There are dark spots at each upper corner of the patella. These may be normal or they may be chips. There’s enough pain to blur the issue and x-rays can’t show everything (something I was to learn way too much about in the next few months). He gives me two Percocets and a cup of water, and grabs a knee immobilizer, which he proceeds to put on. As he’s putting it on I understand why he gave me the Percocets first. It doesn’t hurt my knee at all, but digs deeply into my groin.
Next an orderly comes over with a pair of crutches, which he sizes for me and helps me up onto. I get some advice, some demonstration, and two sheets of how-to-use-crutches instructions.
From the first, it’s obvious I’m a klutz on crutches
Comments