Cru Jones Society

 

If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.

I remember this line from the song that plays during the credits of the Jackass movie. A quick Google search reveals that it’s sung by some guy named Roger Allen Wade.  I always sort of assumed it was the work of Merle Haggard, but that’s only really because I don’t know any Merle Haggard songs, and that song just sounds like it was probably sung by someone named Merle.

I don’t consider myself to be dumb, but I certainly have done more than my share of dumb things in my short life.  Alcohol is often a contributing factor.  I also seem to gravitate toward activities that tend to put me in harm’s way a bit more often than the average person.  I’m not sure why, and I can only imagine I’ll be paying for it in the form of arthritis if I happen to make it to my golden years. Here’s a story that I’m sure will serve as at least part of the extensive preamble I’ll almost certainly give my doctor when he prescribes me enough Celebrex to bring down a fully grown bull elephant.

It happened to be at work recently that I, for approximately the 6^th time in my life, sprained an ankle. I’ve noticed a trend since the first time I did it slipping on a Nerf ball at approximately 9 years of age, right up to several weeks ago when I slipped on a wet rock, and that is, as you get older this shit starts to hurt more. It also takes longer to recover. My last sprain, the result of an ill-advised quasi-drunken attempt at a back flip about a year ago landed me on crutches for a week. This time I’m in a removable boot-cast thing that I’m supposed to wear for a month. I think I was out of commission for about a day and a half when I was 9, and according to the doctor this time I wouldn’t be able to go back to full duty at work for two months.

So, after hurting myself, finishing the rest of the day at work, and spending about an extra hour at the end filling out the necessary paperwork, I decided to make the trip to the local Emergency Room. I’m certainly no Mat Hoffman, but I’ve been to the ER more than my share of times. Once for a broken nose, a second time for a large bloody gash on the top of my head that required 8 staples for closing, and now twice for sprained ankles.  I can safely say, that I’ve only had to go without waiting once, and that was the direct result of me arriving at the ER at about 3 am on a Sunday night/Monday morning, in a fairly well-to-do part of town.  The crappy little stain where I currently reside would grant me no such luxury.

I had an inkling that I would probably be in for a long night, so after I drove myself home and extracted my foot from my work boot to inspect the quickly swelling abomination already becoming a little black and blue that was no longer being held in check by my 8″ high work boot. Immediately upon extraction, my ankle started to throb painfully, and quickly grew to approximately double it’s normal diameter.

I took a few precautions at home before driving myself to the ER. I took a quick shower, ate some food, and even brought myself a little bottle of water all in a little effort to help pass the inevitable wait time before x-rays could tell me if my ankle was broken or not. As I was leaving the house I considered bringing something to read, but by this point the closest book was at least 20 feet away, and since the condition of my ankle was rapidly worsening, I wasn’t about to make the trip back in the other direction. The hospital is less than 10 minutes from my house, but to put it mildly, pushing in a clutch with a sprained left ankle through suburban streets with stop signs every block is no picnic.

I had heard a horror story or two about the atrocious wait times at this particular Emergency Room, and my concerns were confirmed as the lady next to me informed me that she had been waiting for approximately 3.5 hours in the waiting room in agony with a kidney stone – a process she described as only slightly more uncomfortable than childbirth. I could only assume my wait with a mere ankle injury would be much longer. What hope could I possibly have if someone with one of the most painful afflictions known to mankind would be forced to wait for well over three hours?

Upon suggestion from the nice lady with the kidney stone, who was quite chatty and amiable between her spasms of unimaginable suffering, I attempted to locate the Urgent Care facility in town in hopes they would have a shorter wait than the ER. When I finally reached them by telephone, I was informed that although there was nobody there waiting for treatment, at this ripe hour of 8 p.m. on a weeknight, it was too late for me to go over there as they would be closing soon, and additionally they didn’t have their own x-ray machine so they would have to send me back to the ER for x-rays anyway.

Shortly after this disappointment, a man with an ill pregnant wife after waiting an indeterminate amount of time gave up and decided to chance the 1 Hour drive to Tucson to go to the Emergency Room there instead. About an hour later, the kidney stone lady decided to go home and try back earlier in the morning. Her reasoning: at least she had pain medication at home. There was no reason to suffer here in the ER with the crappy magazines and anti-baby shaking pamphlets if they weren’t going to get to her until the morning anyway. I briefly considered the wisdom behind such reasoning, and wished I had thought to bring some Ibuprofen with me. I decided that I wasn’t thrilled about the agony of dealing with my car’s clutch with my now incredibly tender and still throbbing left ankle on not one but two more occasions before seeing a doctor, so I decided to settle in and tough it out – just me and the anti-shaken baby pamphlets.

So, about two and a half hours into my ordeal, I was left without anyone nearby to chat with and attempted to pass the time by trying to figure out what was wrong with everyone else in the ER. They all must have been worse off than me because I was the last one left in the waiting room before I was finally brought back to wait somewhere else for x-rays and a doctor to see me. I was also told that there were no free beds in the ER, but I would wait for the x-ray tech in a wheelchair tucked off in a corner by some multicolored forms individually stacked in cubbies.

My now corner-dwelling wheelchair adjacent to the helpful multi-colored forms granted almost no privacy since it was was essentially a large U shaped room partitioned off with curtains to separate the individual beds. I soon became aware of the two patients in my immediate vicinity. The first was a prisoner under escort by a deputy sheriff who I would soon learn was at the hospital because he was bleeding from the ass. The second was a middle-aged black woman who was certifiably batshit insane. I’m not entirely sure how long I waited here in my wheelchair waiting to go back to have my ankle x-rayed, but at least I had plenty of entertainment back here.

I’m fairly certain any normal person who checked into the ER with rectal bleeding would be afforded the general dignity of a private exam area, but due to the prisoner being there on the state’s dime, he didn’t have many supporters in the immediate area, and I was sitting well within earshot of the entire event. I won’t horrify you all with the details, but two things need to be said about this gentleman. First, there is an unmistakably unique and unpleasant sound a man makes when another man sticks a finger in his ass. And second, a prisoner is fooling no one when he gets indignant after the doctor asks him if any foreign objects have recently been up there.

The large portion of my night consisted of dealing with Starr (assumed spelling) who had been admitted to the ER with back pain, but was also periodically complaining of blindness, the ability to communicate with God, and love sickness. Apparently she once met a very beautiful man a long time ago, or possibly in a past life depending on which version of the story she was telling, when she was a hairdresser.  She also complained of an intermittent inability to walk, but this may have had something to do with the intermittent blindness/God’s ability to see through her eyes.

Dr. Limon’s amateur diagnosis: an acute case of the crazies mixed with a healthy dose of hatred for whitey. She twice attempted to perform an exorcism on me, and once begged the hospital staff for food only to throw her jell-o across the floor angry it wasn’t the ham sandwich she had requested. Starr was repeatedly chastised for her actions by the hospital staff, and was eventually convinced to stay inside her little curtained area.  This did not prevent her from continued attempts to save my soul.

You see, according to Starr, she had once met me when I was a young boy and failed an attempt to exorcise the devil back then. I was alternately berated by her for being possessed by the devil, and for not believing in God – a fact she was able to discern without me ever mentioning anything about my religious beliefs.

I waited approximately two hours, or about 15 re-tellings of the time Starr met me when I was a young boy before I was finally turned over to the x-ray technician who I will simply say was one of the most disagreeable individuals I have ever had the displeasure of interacting with.  My x-ray results came back within about twenty minutes, and a doctor who never bothered to actually look at my ankle pronounced that it was only a bad sprain. He then left me with a referral to an orthopedist, and a prescription for oxycodone, but not for Ibuprofen, which is sort of like thinking you want a Coors Light and ending up with aged 18 year-old scotch. I finally had my ankle splinted and wrapped by some lady who proclaimed that I had cute feet before being given a pair of crutches and sent along my way.

Total ER time: Just shy of 8 Hours.

An emergency room indeed. I fear for the next time I have an emergency when my ankle has shattered into a zillion pieces after trying for another backflip or something. The doctor will probably ask me how it became so frail and withered unable to support a simple standing backflip. I’ll then recount to him my nearly 8 hour experience with kidney stone lady, nervous father-to-be who road tripped to the next town over, and of course Starr – the crazy, whitey-hating medium of God’s vision. He’ll no doubt hand me the Celebrex, the ibuprofen, and if I’m lucky the Oxycodone, and say to me, “Boy, you’re lucky you’re tough because that ER sounds pretty damn dumb.”

Mailto: Senor.Limon@crujonessociety.com