Monday, June 09, 2008

Life Comes Atcha, Fast!

No kidding. It is quite astounding sometimes how much life can change in just the blink of an eye. My trip to a garage sale on Saturday ended in a disaster. I did not get a bargain. Instead I got something I was totally not prepared for. As I was making my way to the first table of stuff, I slipped on wet, painted concrete and fell hard. Very hard. I knew immediately something was seriously wrong. The garage sale people were very kind. A man got my car and drove it over by where I was sitting on a wheeled office chair. They wheeled me over to the car, I levered myself in, and I drove myself home.

Later, R drove us to the emergency department of a county hospital. And we only spent about an hour there, which was fairly fast for an ER visit, I think. The ER doc was very nice.
He explained that it was just a fractured pelvic bone, not a broken hip. Which was nice to hear. He seemed more worried about my blood pressure than anything else—like maybe someone who is in considerable pain from a fractured bone and totally stressed out because of the dramatic changes in store from that moment on is going to have 120/80? He said there wasn’t really anything that could be done this type of a fracture except resting in bed and no weight-bearing. “So,” he said, “call a doctor on Monday and get that blood pressure checked out” as he walked way to see the next patient. Which looked like an injury to a lower leg or ankle, judging from the x-ray film displayed on the terminal he wheeled by a few minutes later.

An unexpected blessing came on Sunday. Church was canceled because I wasn't going to be there, the pastor was sick, another couple was out-of-town, and no one else was expected to come. So R put a note on the door. As it happened, a couple who weren't aware of all this drama showed up for the service. She is on a permanent respirator and spends all of her time in an electric wheelchair because of a degenerative diseases--muscular dystrophy maybe, or ALS, or something like that--and he came over to see why church had been canceled. When he saw our predicament, he offered us the use of a wheelchair that had been custom-designed for his wife while she was still able to use her arms. It is small and narrow and fits through the odd-sized doors in our house. I was definitely going to need a wheelchair, and a regularly sized wheelchair would never have worked. It just amazes me how God arranges these things. I don't understand why He allowed the accident to happen, but He certainly has blessed in the process.

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