Being dropped off at the bus-stop by Corrie, who needed to get to a meeting, I crutched it over an onto the carriage. There is a bus that, for just a buck, takes passengers from Long Beach all the way to Redondo Beach. One stop along the way is the hospital I've been using. Easy money.
The bus had two separate times where it filled up with high school kids, and then emptied nearly entirely at specific stops. Wild.
Eventually I was getting up to the openings, and the day's heat was beginning to make itself known. The heat wave that struck the Southland hadn't broken yet, and at ten after eight in the morning it was pleasant out, but the high pressure front was tapping you on the shoulder and whispering in your ear.
My appointment was at 8:30, so by 9:25 I got called back to go and get my x-rays taken. Well, I mean that by 9:25 I was sent to a different waiting area to wait for the x-ray. Before then I had befriended a nice Latino descent man in a wheel-chair, around my age (maybe a little older), with his left leg in a cast. We were able to commiserate about left leg issues. He'd broken his tibia and fibula, both pretty cleanly, in a slip down three measly stairs at his mother's house. A lawyer was telling him that homeowner's insurance could reward him handsomely. He looked at me with a mix of sadness with the world and anger at greed and said, "I'm not suing my mom."
Eventually I got called back to have x-rays taken, maybe a few minutes before ten, and once on the table, trying to get into position, the technician asked me if I'd had surgery yet. I glared at him, and ran my finger along my 14" scar and said, "No. This is just a birthmark."
He was not amused.
Eventually we got to talking and joking, and he talked about how hot it was outside. I told him that I'd been at the hospital for so long that it had been nice outside when I'd arrived. I said it with a grin, and the guy was Nigerian, so he didn't really know what to make of it.
Finally I got to see a doctor, and by that I mean "doctor". It was another young ortho resident, another person I'd never met before, like all my visits to see my "doctor". Every room was full, so at first we talked while I sat on a gurney. She admonished me for still using crutches.
"The last time I was here they guy told me not to put any weight on it. Then, right before I left and after pushing the point, he said I could put just a little bit of weight on it," I was getting fired up and my tone in the last ten or twelve word was getting harsh. This ortho doc, a young lady that would otherwise be checking out my ass in tight jeans, looked into my eyes, but like she wasn't listening.
"I've been getting mixed messages every time I come in here," I followed up.
She just went into detail about how the femur is totally healed but since I hadn't been using it, the bone had degenerated a bit, and I was sporting a 55-year-old's leg-bone. She said I had to stop using the crutches soon, like really soon, and be aggressive about rehabbing.
I crutched it out of the office and into Torrance's sweltering early afternoon sun, and made my way to the bus-stop, seething with misplaced anger...maybe not misplaced, but not really useful. At the stop, I was muttering under my breath about the events and lifted the bottoms of the crutches off the ground, and started to take steps, baby steps.
By the time the bus came, I'd been pacing wobbly and gritting my teeth, but not needing the crutches. My ankle, through lack of use had become quite tender, and still is the bane of my recovery. But, I managed to hobble my way from the downtown Long Beach stop to the coffee shop I'd done so much work, and then hobbled my way home, all the while carrying my crutches instead of using them.
I resembled a drunken pimp. Right now it's not about grace, it's about strengthening the bone.
A scene played out in my head as I made my way from the stop to the coffee house, played over and over many times as I painfully went for it:
"You know who he reminds me of?"
"Bob Barker? Snoop Doggy Dogg? David Brenner?"
"No, no. You know the one I mean. The one who's always standing and walking."
"Rory Calhoun?"
"That's it! Look at him, standing like a little Rory Calhoun!"
That's me, standing and walking like a little Rory Calhoun. I might even accidently respond to "Little Monty".
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