Where I Have Been…
Let me see, when last I saw you all, I was in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. Let me translate that … Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island.
Why? To install a server that never arrived, but that’s a different story.
Anyways, as my last post in this thread said, my first flight home got cancelled due to high winds. Flights were duly rebooked and further expenses authorized, blah blah…
The next morning, the alarm clock in the hotel room went off, and since it’s one of those keen air raid siren jobbies, I leapt out of bed to murder the thing. My foot caught in the carpet, and went crunch snap. I sat on the floor and said bad words for a while, then silenced the clock. Sitting there cradling my swelling foot, I consider my options.
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I can be good and go to the emergency room in the Iqaluit hospital,deal with out-of-territory doctors, dueling Medicare systems, and the possibility of missing my flight home for what might just be a bad sprain,
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I can put my good leather hikers on, get on my plane at 10:30, and get it checked when I get home if it doesn’t feel right,
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or Hi, Opal.
I picked option 2. (Well,I didn’t think option 3 would be really effective for this situation. I could be wrong, though…)
Anyways, I popped a couple Tylenols, limped onto the plane and headed for home. I landed in Vancouver at 11:30 pm or so. I will likely never know the man’s name, but the shuttle bus driver in Vancouver will always be remembered gratefully. He took one look at my hobble, and practically carried me and my luggage to my hotel room, got me an ice pack, and picked me up at my room in the morning. I tipped him as generously as I could afford, but geez, he was just so wonderful…
My husband watched me hobble off the plane, insisted on looking at my foot, and whisked me off to the hospital. I walked in and wheelchaired out.
Yeah, yeah, fine, to cut a long story short (about time), it was a Jones fracture of the right foot. Specifically, I snapped off the proximal end of the fifth metatarsal bone in the foot. Apparently also called Dancer’s Foot (happens in ballet, among other athletic type activities). Weird thing is, for a break, it didn’t hurt much, I’ve had ankle sprains that hurt more…
I got to take the next month off work, as apparently this type of fracture can be difficult to heal, and you are not allowed to put any weight at all on it. I am a desk jockey. I chose it deliberately - I do not like carrying heavy things. Especially not 130 pounds of me plus 30 pounds of cast up two flights of stairs. No bathroom on my floor, no elevator in my building.
Work from home? SMS administration over a 33.6 dialup connection? Are you mad? SMS admin components on an ADSL-connected Citrix server? Pardon me, I have to make a phone call. You’re definitely barking mad.
However, just because I was crippled and at home doesn’t mean I wasn’t busy and doin’ stuff. After all, it was a foot, not a hand. I made some jewellry, started playing at carving some soapstone, and had quality time with my family until we were heartily sick of each other.
However, I am now back at work and am ready to resume some semblance of a normal life, including resuming my normal routine of drive-by smartass remarks, occasional awkward attempts at sympathy, and even more occasional attempts to contribute useful information.
Yeah, I know, you were all desperatly concerned about me, and were about to send search parties to the high Arctic to see if the plane went down, or if I was being held hostage by radical Inuit activists and forced to eat muktuk, right?