the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

First, don't panic. I'll be ok.

I broke my ankle Friday night. It seems I live in a deathtrap. I cannot safely negotiate the stairs down to my bedroom.

What happened was...I twisted it so viciously that it fractured the bone where the ligament was attached. As you might imagine...painful.

So I slept (fitfully) all night, thinking I'd just wrenched it, no big deal. When I rose the next morning, I couldn't put weight on it. It was just a sprain, I thought. I'll just take more Motrin (I'm on a regimen for my shoulder, anyway--bursitis*), ice it, elevate it, etc. After about three hours, the pain hadn't lessened, I began to think about how I was going to spend the rest of the weekend. It was all I could do to get to the living room and back.

* And yeah...I realize how much my posts read like conversation in an Old Folks' Home.

I finally decided that, in the name of crutches, I'd need some medical care. I called the Law Enforcement Desk (since I naturally had this problem after duty hours), told them about my stupidity, and the fine young airman called an ambulance and an interpreter for me.

The ambulance arove. They had an interesting gurney that turned into a make-shift wheelchair, but they still had to lift me up the stairs. They then flattened me out and strapped me into the ambulance like Hannibal Lector. I remember neighborhood children gawking at me.

They whisked me to the hospital (as much as one can "whisk" in Izmir), and gently dumped me onto a somewhat softer bed. Then they came in and asked if they could cut my jeans so they could get to the ankle. :| Erm...no. How about I just take them off? I am conscious (very much so...they had not offered any sort of pain control). So they put a blanket over me and I slipped the jeans off.

A doc came in and poked and wiggled my foot and my knee. My whole leg looks like I was on the receiving end of a nasty car accident, following Thursday's bicycle escapades, so their precautions were understandable. Doc Number 1 said it didn't seem to be broken, but they'd get some X-rays.

I'd wisely brought my Kindle, having been admitted to emergency rooms once or twice in the past, so when they wheeled me in and dumped me under the X-ray, I turned on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and relaxed. The relaxation didn't last long. The X-ray tech didn't speak English, so she took the liberty of manipulating my damaged part as necessary. She took two pictures, then left.

No one came to get me, but that's normal. They were no doubt making sure they didn't need more photos, since I was kinda hard to move around. She came back in and we went through the whole dance again, then they brought me back into the sunlight.

Doc Number 1 returned and said I had a free-floating fragment of bone, but it would be ok. They needed "the professor" to come down, so we had to wait. The wait, I think, took almost two hours. The professor --Doc Number 2--checked it out, showed me my X-rays, then explained that I'd need a cast.

I gots to say...given the choice between a clean break and a nasty sprain with a break, let's just have the break, ok? By this time, my ankle had a two-inch wide swatch of deep purple bruise from below the shapeless lump that my ankle had become to about five inches up the outside. Now they had to manipulate it to get it "into position" in a cast that goes almost all the way to the knee.

Around 4pm, they checked me out, gave me polio crutches, and put me in a taxi.

I've kinda learned my way around, so I'm ok with taxis now.

A car was parked squarely in front of the sidewalk to my apartment door (anywhere else, this is illegal; here it is undisputed rock star parking), so I had to edge sideways around it, a somewhat awkward operation. I was almost to the sidewalk proper when strange man walked up. He motioned for my keys, opened the door, helped me through, practically carried me down the stairs, and opened my apartment door to let me in. I'm guessing he is one of my neighbors; he seemed to understand I don't speak Turkish. He'd said nothing. I said teshekkuler. He smiled, nodded, and left.

This morning, my doorbell rang. It was my next-door neighbor, the retired musician Necip. He communicated, with the help of some loan words, limited English, and charades, that he'd seen me hauled away in the ambulance. He gave me his phone number in case I needed anything, such as grocery shopping. I thanked him profusely and went back inside.

About an hour later, he rang again and handed me something hot wrapped in aluminum foil. It was spicy grilled chicken with toasted bread. Quite tasty.

I can kinda walk now, but for very limited periods of time, followed by long periods of sitting with my foot elevated. I called my division head this morning to report in. He laughed at me for falling down my stairs, then asked if I needed anything. A couple of other friends have also called to make sure I didn't need them to run errands.

I don't mean to imply people here are better than they are elsewhere. I am, though, moved by the fact that people will insist upon helping you even when they cannot understand you, or you them, and whether you ask for it or not.

d