...Part 3

Sorry that Part 3 of the "saga" has taken so long to post, but I was having some problems concentrating on getting things done with all the pain killers and stuff going through my system. Anyway...here it finally is...Part 3!

A block from the Hospital, Jan (the driver of the Ambulance) informed me that Pretoria drivers were very courteous, because a lady in a smallish car had just moved off the road to let him pass. When I asked him to describe the car...Guess who? Yip, the wife!

Outside Casualties/Trauma, I was "cuddled" in a blanket to make sure that I did not catch frost bite or something, because it had become quite chilly in Pretoria and I was lying on a stretcher with nothing more than the remains of my denim and a pair of underpants! What made up for all this was seeing my wife and kids outside the ambulance.

Family reunion and transfer of private property took place outside the ambulance, along with some emotional thank you's for the ambulance personnel who had taken such good care of me and then I was wheeled into the Hospital.

Sometimes one just has to look carefully at the signs around you to realise how fortunate you are, because as I was wheeled into the Casualty at Wilgers Hospital in Pretoria, someone else was busy taking care of the remains of a person who didn't make it. Yes, you guessed it...they were busy wheeling out someone in a body bag!

I was placed in the Orthopedic ward that same evening and by about 11:15pm everything was organised and sorted. I slept a little "fitfully" to say the least, until they started giving me pain killers through the drip! I'm sure the pain killers were organised by the Borg (Star Trek something-or-other), because once they introduced the pain killers into the drip line...
"Relaxation is inevitable!!"

Thursday evening (day after the accident), just before visiting hour, I was suddenly whisked off to the theatre and they explained that they were going to do a "Closed Reduction" of the leg...which, of course, meant very little to me until I woke up and found that they had pulled and twisted and bent the leg back into shape and put everything in a plaster cast. Fortunately they did all of this under anesthetic.

The main reason for this was apparently to make sure that everything is as straight as possible by the time I could be operated on. It was also done to make sure that the parts were properly aligned and set up and stuff...Technical terminology, which makes sense only to the Medically inclined, was used a this point.

I had to lie around in the Hospital for a whole week before the swelling had subsided sufficiently for the Doc to be willing to operate and see what he could do with all the spares that were left in the leg. When I awoke from that lot I knew that I had been operated on, because the pain was tremendous. It was so bad I nearly agreed that the Anesthetist could give me a spinal block to relieve the pain, until I realised it meant he would have to inject stuff into my spine! That freaked me out more than the pain, so I decided against it.

Anyway...another couple of days later and here I am in my own bed...at home...finishing off the lat part of the saga for you. I'll probably revisit the saga in the near future, because if this experience has given me anything, it has been the time to consider and think on those things that are important to me and that make life worth living.

More later...