And just like that....I nearly killed my damn self, and completely missed the changing of the Old Guard (2021--good-fucking-bye and good-fucking-riddance) to the New (2022, not looking too good, so far). We'd gone to Tampa on Wednesday, the 29th of December, in order to spend the New Years holidays with C's cousin and her family. Immediately upon arrival, I deduced that it would be a good idea to play tag football with the cousin's 9 year old son, a 5'4", 135 lb. ox. of muscle and motion. Even given the noted Wells coordination (or lack thereof), it was an astonishingly brief interstice from the start of the game to me hitting the edge of the backyard patio at top speed, briefly becoming airborne, and then  taking a spectacular nosedive into the cold, hard embrace of solid concrete. My descent was dreamy slo-mo, like a playback on Monday Night Football; the crash-landing, on the other hand, was catastrophic real time, my outstretched hands failing to prevent the hard bounce of head against cement, the bone-jarring confluence of unstoppable force against immoveable object.

Poetry in motion it was not. 

I lay there, soundless and unable to move, splattered against the patio floor like a grasshopper on the hood of my college-era Mustang. The cousin's husband was 20 feet away preparing the grill for a cookout, C and his cousin just on the other side of the sliding kitchen doors. Could no one see me laying there? Did I not make enough noise when the game suddenly came to a screeching halt? And where was the kid anyway? Was I still there? Had I slipped into the Twilight Zone? Was I even alive? These questions arose from some timeless mist that hovered somewhere along the edges of the pain barrier that was rapidly expanding like the effects of a nuclear explosion, sweeping first one way, toppling everything in its wake, and then returning in an annihilating wave from the opposite direction to finish the job. Eventually--maybe seconds, maybe longer--the kid got help and everyone came running, although the pain had rendered me mute, and unable to answer the simplest questions. After establishing that I could move my fingers, the kid's father (an NFL sized individual, himself) promptly hauled me to my feet, which is approximately the point where I found my voice and began to scream. After some extremely difficult maneuvering, they managed to load me up in C's Buick and we headed to the emergency room. Each corner turned, every stoplight, sent a hellish agony coursing through my body and brought forth a new round of shrieks. By the time we got to the hospital, I was speaking in tongues.

Naturally, the ER was filled with COVID patients, probably of the Omicron variety. With two masks strapped firmly across my face, I was shaking uncontrollably and practically hyperventilating when they lifted me into a wheelchair. 

"On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest..." the ER nurse began. 

"It's a goddamn 10,000," I managed to gasp, cutting her off as I sagged over to the right side of the wheelchair.

The P.A. who saw me was way too cheerful, given his surroundings (to be specific, the general melee in the waiting area). Since the majority of my pain seemed to be radiating from my back (notice I said SEEMED TO BE) I indicated that he might want to take a look at that first. After quickly running his hands across my back, he concluded that I had a muscle spasm, ordered that I be given a muscle relaxer and, in fact, gave me a scrip for muscle relaxers before sending me away. Given the sheer scope of my agony, I felt, somehow, shortchanged. A muscle spasm? I'd heard that muscle spasms were painful but this really felt like something was broken. This was enduring, out-of-body experience level pain. But there was to be no x-ray, no CT Scan. Poor C and his obliging cousin had to contend with lifting me out of the wheelchair and back into the car, which took about 30 minutes and provoked a level of torment that I hope never to endure again. 

The next few days were spent mostly in a blur of suffering and shock as I lay in the bed on my right side, unable to sit up, feed myself or even go to the bathroom (forget about doing a #2; the muscle relaxers and my basic inability to eat, ensured total constipation for the entire week--not a bad thing, as it turned out). For all this, we had the muscle relaxers, Extra Strength Tylenol and a medical strength rib brace that probably sped up the healing process, even though we didn't know it at the time.

Somehow, during all this, 2021 became 2022, and I was none the wiser. Was there champagne? Confetti? Party hats and tiaras? In a state of altered consciousness, I watched reruns of Columbo, Maude, and All In the Family on a wall-mounted TV set broadcasting only golden oldie fare. Or so it seemed. 

Meanwhile, C and his cousin ministered patiently and endlessly to my considerable needs, making sure that plates of food appeared and disappeared with regularity, and reliably producing the pee bottle when needed. They lifted me up as dead weight, in order that I should be able to be changed into clean undergear, and not get bed sores on my hip bone and shoulder. 

By the 4th day of our stay, I was able to walk briefly and take a pee on my own. On the 5th day, we decided we needed to figure out a way to get back to Broward County, and by the 6th day, we'd scored a Vicodin and were finally able to get me to the car and make our way home. 

Our first order of business was to call  my primary doctor, who, upon hearing my description of the injuries and the way I fell, immediately suspected damage to a rib. We scheduled a CT scan for the following week but the pain became so intense that we soon found ourselves in yet another ER, albeit one operating with a higher level of competence than the one we'd previously consulted. By now, 12 days had elapsed since the Tampa incident. After the CT Scan, the ER physician here confirmed that there was, indeed, an acute fracture of the left 6th rib. Informing me that he'd suffered broken ribs, himself, the doctor advised me that I was going to need strong pain meds for the next 4-6 weeks, and gave me a Percocet and a shot of morphine before sending me home. My primary doctor has been on teleconferences with me almost every day since our return, providing me with prescriptions for Vicodin and Flexeril, as well as a level of commitment and concern that I have found lacking in some other Florida doctors. In fact, if not for C, his cousin and my primary, I would not be feeling like I might be finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Granted, that light is still a glimmer but it's getting closer every day.  

Was this misadventure any indication of what the rest of 2022 holds, I wonder? Who knows. I can only hope that we got the worst out of the way at the onset. My missing Andy Cohen's New Year's Eve appearance with Anderson Cooper on CNN is certainly a step in the right direction.