The whole story

So, about that post that I made way back on January 3rd. It's clearly been a while, much longer than I intended.

DH won tickets to a black-tie New Year's Eve party downtown. We don't get dressed up and go out to stuff like that very often, so we thought it might be fun. So we went, and it was okay. Turned out we didn't know anyone there except each other. The food was decent and the band was really good. At midnight they dropped a bunch of balloons from the ceiling and had a champagne toast for everyone. At about 12:03, DH walked away from me to throw away the little plastic champagne glasses, and as he tells it, he came back to find me holding my arm and crying.

I was on the dance floor (which at this particular venue is not a dance floor at all but a huge wide expanse of marble tile) when some drunk guy next to me slipped on a spilled drink and fell. When he fell, he slid into me and knocked my feet out from under me, and I landed on my right elbow on that nice hard marble tile. I never saw it coming--it was so fast, I was on my feet one minute and the next minute I was on the floor. Of course the drunk who knocked me over just blinked a few times, got up and mumbled, "Sorry," and wandered off and left me on the floor. At that point the evening was pretty much over for us.

My elbow was really painful all night and neither DH nor I got a lot of sleep. The next morning he drove me to Urgent Care. If I may make a suggestion--NEVER go to Urgent Care on New Year's Day unless you absolutely have to. Apparently everyone goes to Urgent Care for even minor stuff because all of the regular doctor's offices are closed. We were there for over three hours. Long story short, I fractured the head of my radius at the elbow. I am seeing an orthopedic doctor. The arm was in a splint and a sling for a while, then it was wrapped for a few more weeks. I have been going to physical therapy 3 times a week since mid-February because although the bone is now healed, I am not able to completely extend my arm. It is improving, but not quite normal yet. I go to the doctor again next week, so we shall see what he says.

As part of my physical therapy, I have to wear something called a dynamic extension brace for 8 hours a day. It has a spring in it and forces my arm to extend. It is a huge pain. It hurts my arm and makes it difficult to accomplish basic tasks. I cannot drive in it. Well, I can, but I'm not technically supposed to, so most of the time I don't. Here is a picture. It's not pretty.