our days into break… life is golden. its the perfect balance of being excited to get back to friends at school, but being thrilled to catch up with friends from church and highschool. the perfect balance of enjoying quality time with my family, and getting away from them before we want to kill eachother (mostly). the perfect balance of running around for fun and adventure and still having time to curl up on the couch with the puppy and some tv and just relax.
[begin drawing rant, feel free to ignore]
the only thing dragging me down is knowing that i still have to do the final project for drawing, plus make up 4 days of in-class work for it, all before the end of j-term, though my wrist is still in a splint (i can take it off to do the range-of-motion exercises, but not much beyond that) and while i tried to draw in pen with that hand a little today, it was freaking hard, hurt after a few minutes, and i have better control with a pen to begin with, so trying to use charcoal or conte crayon will be even worse… like, its not terrible… i can do the classwork (figure drawing) right handed, since its mostly about tone and larger strokes, so more of a gross motor skill, which i’m decent at right handed, and i might be able to start the final project right handed (assuming i ever think of something to draw), but i’ll need my left hand to do the detail and make it look like anything… and i have all of break and jterm, but i’m still not looking forward to it.
so i’m just not going to think about it. not yet. after christmas i’ll pick subjects, get some supplies (i was running out anyways, and then forgot to bring what i had left home), and then consider starting that.
[end drawing rant]
for now i’m thinking about christmas! loving jesus and making cards and eating cookies and giving presents and enjoying family and friends! (who really are truely amazing. i love you all so much!)
December 2007
5 posts
so last night, i was up all night writing a paper… it was lame… i slept for about 4 hours this afternoon, which was lovely. now, for some odd reason, i’m still up, despite having nothing due tomorrow… kay?
i came to the computer lab to print something cause my roommate holly was asleep, and inevitably got horrendously distracted. my friend buzz is here and he just did a very frightening dance… but he brought me tea so i’ll let it go… this time…
oh, so the thing i wanted to print, i wanted to print on this piece of very orange paper, but i could not for the life of me convince the printer to use it, no matter which tray i put it in… then all the sudden some random guy printed something, and the printer chose that moment to use my paper! so this guy’s homework comes out orange, and of course i only brought the one piece, so now i have to go back to the room and get another. or i could copy one of the white ones onto the orange in my room and make noise, (risking the wrath of the holly) or wait til morning and risk forgetting or running late… blast.
also, i really need to decide if i want to try to go to the school’s christmas dance… seeing as its kind of tonight technically… part of me does want to go and hang out with everybody and not be the loser who stays home, but i don’t have a date, and i don’t really have anything great to wear. i could figure something out, but i’m not terribly motivated to because if i’m not going with a date… and if i did decide to go i’d need to find a ride there, and get all that sorted out before the ticket office closes… so basically i’m just being indecisive and lame? myeh.
i’m having a christmas tea for the peer group tomorrow/today… that should be funses!
i’m enjoying the whole writing right-handed (aka wrong handed) thing. it looks like a cross between a 5 year old’s handwriting and my grandmothers… i’m not sure if i should be writing in crayon or on notecards with pine trees on the front? maybe write on pine tree notecards in crayon?
i finally talked to the drawing prof… i’ll just make up the final project and a few classes worth of figure drawing whenever i can draw again. as long as i turn it all in by 6 weeks into second semester its golden. (and if not… i just drop the whole thing ^_^ )
for now i’m just the one-armed wonder. (i can knit with a broken wrist!?)
this is an apology for the last two posts.
i write too much.
which is silly, because i’m doing this one handed, and that hand is now very tired, and you surely do not need to know every ridiculous/boring detail of my life.
if you read either, or worse yet, both of these posts entirely, you deserve a medal…
…or a mental hospital, i’m not sure…
if a child with two functioning hands can’t get into them, how is a slightly disoriented 19-year-old with one hand in a splint supposed to?
the first presciption only had enough for a few days, and the second was a different drug that wasn’t strong enough, so this is the third distinct bottle of medication i’ve been handed specifically for this injury and the subsequent surgery, and still somehow no one has gotten the picture? now what does this tell us about the intelligence or at least common sense of my doctors and pharmacists?
oh well, thank god for parents or friends being around most of the time to lend a hand (quite literally). anywayses, here’s the update since the last note!:
i last wrote from lydia’s house in nj. once i finished updating the world here on the events of the preceding days and a little ingenuity got me into my meds, i wandered across the hall to the bed i had been offered and promptly zonked out. that morning i woke up to the fabulous orchestral christmas cd lydia was adding to her ipod, befriended a few of her kitties, had some tea, watched a show about airplanes while she finished updating the ‘pod and gathering her stuff, and then we headed off, stopping for some yummy chicken on the way.
i called my daddy to make sure he was sufficiently convinced that the weather sunday night would be acceptable for my mom to pick me up, i just went back to campus with lydia, and i’m very much happyful that i was able to, as it was a rather enjoyable weekend. when we got back, i tested my wrong-handed writing skills as i compliled my to-do list for the rest of the semester, and then proceeded to completely disregard it! ^_^ instead, i wandered around visiting folks, had a lovely chat with brian, met a few friends for dinner and then went we to see Stardust in the campus theater, lost track of them on the way out, so i did some reading until i met up with billwill and his new boy, hung out with them for a bit, and then just kind of did nothing in particular for the rest of the night.
sunday, i woke up just in time to have lunch with brian and bryan, which was muchly fun. eventually wandered back towards the room and started gathering ingredients for cookies, recruited sarah to help with the parts of baking that require two hands, made some delishy cookies (basic sugar cookie recipe, but i shoved a raspberry m&m into the top of each so they were extra yummyful) and then we meandered through the halls disributing them among friends! i love feeding the people i love… i think i was an italian grandmother in a past life… anyways, then i took a dozen of the cookies i had set aside to my housechurch’s christmas shindig, where we had a cookie exchange, (so now i have more assorted cookies to share)… and then we went back to school, and my mom came and picked me up and we went home!
monday morning we went to the hospital, sat around for about a year, finished my lifespan reading and still had an hour to spare… eventually they came and took me away… somewhere between the iv to relax me and just being wiped out i fell asleep, they did this crazy nerve block thing on my entire left arm so i had no feeling or control of it for like 18 hours, and they repaired the lovely little fracture in my wrist with a freaking metal plate… eventually i woke up, had some crackers, went home… no pain that day, cause i couldn’t feel anything in that arm, but the next few there was definitely some owwie… basically vegetated on the couch for the next few days… took lots of percocet, watched lots of law & order, and got a little bit of schoolwork done on the rare occasions i was sufficiently conscious.
today we went back to the hospital to get another prescription, they figured they’d do the post-op stuff while we were there so i don’t have to go back wednesday… the doctor checked it out and said it was healing well, sent me to the physical therapist for a removable splint and some exercises to get motion back… went home, chilled a while, and then daddy brought me back to school… wandered around a bit, assured people i in fact did not die or fall off the edge of the universe, ect… and here i am.
so this note is to say, if you didn’t see me in person to get those assurances… well, you’ve got them now, and i’m sure you’ll see me eventually, or you could call me and we could hang out… i’m a fan of that.
so yes, i’m back, i’m alive, i’m a little loopy but will theoretically be going to the last week+day of classes and then finals (which will be interesting), and we should hang out and you can laugh at me being even slightly stranger than usual (if that’s possible). but now i’m sleepy and need to use the lou, so i’ll be going then… goodnight!
wednesday night, we went to the hockey game.
a few minutes before it started, charlie realized he forgot his hockey pants back at his apartment. he asked if bethany and i would take his car and go back to get them for him.so i drive his car back to campus, we find his pants, and drive back.
about a block from the rink, we’re waiting at the light to turn left. we get the green arrow and start to turn, and all the sudden, wham! the airbags are out, bethany starts screaming, and i’m just like what the frick is happenning?
(apparently, some moron coming straight from the other direction didn’t stop at his red light and slammed into our front right corner as we were starting to turn.)
it took me a few seconds to realize we must have crashed, were still moving (though no longer in quite the right direction) and my foot wasn’t on the brake. by the time my foot had searched out the brake and managed to stop, we were like 30 feet down the road. i manage to put it in park, though i left it running, and wriggled out of the car somehow without unbuckleing. i walk back up to the actual intersection, where the other car had stopped, and somehow there’s already an emt there radioing for police, ambulances, and a firetruck (the guys car was smoking a little).
all of 30 seconds after i get out of the car, charlie calls wondering where his pants are. i try to tell him we were just in an accident, we’re a block away, get out here, but he couldn’t hear so he couldn’t understand, so not knowing something major had happenned, he went on and played the rest of the game in a random pair of shorts.
there’s all sorts of chaos and commotion. bethany has some pretty nasty cuts on her hand from the passenger side window. i call home quickly. a few people leaving the game stop and see whats going on, but i loose track of pretty much everyone. they ask me if i’m hurt at all, and by that point my left wrist is feeling a little sore, so i say yes, figuring i should probably get it checked out. by the time another ambulance gets there, my wrist was pretty much killing me, so i get in, they give me an icepack and take me to holy spirit hospital.
i get in the er, they sit me down on a bed in a hallway, take my information, and pretty much disappear. i lose track of the nice emts who brought me in, the girl who took my information, and i’m basically chillin in this hallway, so i call my parents again, text my roommates and people who were waiting for me at the game, and i wait. like 40 minutes later, somebody shows up and takes me to get xrayed. on the way to the xray, i see bethany in a bed in one of the actual rooms, and a few familliar faces with her, so i say hi, and go get my xray. they lead me back to my hallway, and sarah and romel are there, so thats happy.
eventually a doctor comes over and we go look at my xrays, discover i broke my wrist, he say’s they’ll splint it up and give me some pain meds, and i should see an orthopedist in a day or two. a little while later they give me the splint, a percoset, and the prescription for more, and tell me i’m free to go. thank god by this point i had seen people i know, because otherwise i would have just been sitting there glaring at them, asking “and exactly how do you propose i do that?”
so i gather up my coat, xrays, and a million papers in my one functioning hand, and wander off to re-find bethany’s room. i find everybody, catch up on what’s going on, we still have to wait a while for them to take care of bethany’s hand, so some of us go out to the rest in the waiting room, a few of the guys go out to sheetz and bring back food. we hang around a while, eventually bethany gets patched up and we all head back to campus, getting in around 3am.
i email my teachers to let them know i probably won’t make it to most of my classes that day (being thursday by this point), make the facebook group, and go to sleep. around 9, my mom calls and wakes me up and makes me make some calls to sort things ou, and then i go back to sleep, wake up around 1p, go to lottie, and then go to ed psych, just for kicks, since i don’t really do anything in that class anyway. after that my daddy got there, we went and found charlie, and went to the place the cars got towed to get our stuff out of his car and try to figure out insurance stuff, stopped by the police station to pick up the pre-report notice they had left for me, went back to school, dropped charlie off, made him a copy of the notice, and went home.
earlier today, (i’m still counting it as friday,) my mom took me to an orthopedist, who looked at the xrays from wednesday night, told me to wiggle my fingers, and decided (without xraying again to see if anything had changed, or even unwrapping the splint to actually SEE my wrist, so i thought that was pretty wierd) that i’d have to have surgery.
we left, stopped to buy some yoga pants that i could put on with one hand, got some tacos for a late lunch, went home, i duct-taped a plastic bag around my hand so i could shower (note, i did this without help, thoroughly impressing my mother), and lydia picked me up and we drove to new jersey to see reilly the band, (who we both love and had planned to see before this all happenned, and i wasn’t gonna let a car acciden’t and broken wrist ruin my weekend ^_^ ). it was at lydia’s home church, and i know some of the band through mutual friends, so we stuck around and chatted for a while, and then came back to her house, she went to bed, and i decided it was time to tell this lovely story.
tomorrow morning i’ll call my mom, and if she thinks its going to snow sunday night, i’ll have to ask lydia to drop me at home on her way back to school, but if my mom doesn’t think driving will be too bad sunday night, i’ll go back to messiah with lydia tomorrow so i can go to my housechurch’s christmas gathering sunday evening, and then my mom will come out to fetch me again after. monday morning i’ll be having a metal plate screwed into my wrist, and a new splint put on. tuesday night or wednesday, whenever i’m feeling up to it, my daddy will drive me back to school. sometime the next week, probably tuesday night, i’ll take the train home, have my post-op appointment wednesday hopefully, get fitted for a hard plastic removable splint, and then one of the parentals will bring me back for the last two days of classes, finals, and then i’ll go home for a christmas, physical therapy to regain motion in my wrist, and probably working in petsmart.
a few miscallaneous tidbits:
- the moron who hit us doesn’t have a liscence, and rumor has it he’s an illegal immigrant.
- he has an insurance company listed on the police report, so we’re really hoping it’s valid so it will pay for charlie’s car, because his won’t.
- bethany and i are fine, other than our hand injuries, which will thankfully be paid for by our own auto insurance companies.
- my dad is convinced the moron might try to sue us, which would be retarded since it was obviously, completely, and undisputably his fault, and we’re wondering if charlie might have to sue him to pay for a new car if the insurance doesn’t come through.
- my friends, family, and puppy are absolutely amazing and i love you all!
- i said to charlie “sorry i broke your car” and he said “sorry i broke your wrist” and is being amazingly cool about this whole thing. we’re both apparently ridiculous optimists.
- i didn’t cry at all that night, or from pain or trauma since.
- i’m getting amazingly good at doing things one-handed.
- it happens to be my left wrist, which is better than if it was my right hand, right? wrong, i happen to be left-handed. (luckily, i’m pretty ambidextrous, other than actually writing and fine drawing, so it’s not so bad)
- when someone is injured in such a way that they cannot use one of their hands, you should not put their pain pills in a childproof bottle. simultaneously pushing and twisting the cap while holding the bottom is pretty much impossible with one hand, as i’m just realizing now, for the first time not having anyone available when its time to take one. (i did manage, using the inside of my knee to grasp it!)
okay, now the lovely drugs are kicking in, and 2 hours of typing one-handed is tiring, so i think its time for bed. pray the insurance stuff works out for charlie, bethany’s hand heals up quick, and that my art teacher gives me a break on my final project! haha oy. goodnight loves!
