Saturday Stuff: A Neat Award & a Natty Leg

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. ~ Jules Renard (1864-1910)

 

The PREMIO DARDOS award is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing.

Thank you, Mimi, for presenting Nick’s Bytes with such a meaningful award!

Do you remember my blogging about my pulled, strained or whatever Sartorius muscle in my right leg last Saturday? Since then I’ve taken the meds prescribed and followed he doc’s directions. By last Wednesday I believed that healing was well underway—at least I didn’t have the severe pain I had experienced when moving my leg and I could actually lift my foot off the floor when I walked.

So I had no real concern about driving to an appointment at the VA clinic yesterday. I should have! Most of the drive was on expressways, so I didn’t have to move my right leg: I was able to control my speed using the cruise control and, when merging from one expressway onto another, gearing down from 5^th gear to 3^rd gear (as I usually do when I merge at that location). My left leg, although still a problem, had no difficulty working the clutch.

However, when I left the expressway, I encountered three red lights in a row. I experience a jolt of pain as I approached the first light and tried to engage the brake. By the third light, I couldn’t lift my right leg onto the break and stopped—just barely—by putting the gear in neutral and using my left leg on the brake. When I turned into the VA parking lot, I ended up stopping the car by letting it roll up to the concrete thingie at the end of the parking space.

Then I found that I couldn’t get out of the car on my own! I couldn’t lift my right leg.  With Tasha’s help—and a lot of pain—I made it out and entered the clinic in a wheelchair that Tasha had brought from the clinic. (Thankfully, they have a couple of huge wheelchairs that I can get my obese ass into!)

After the appointment, I realized that I couldn’t safely drive home. Realistically, I probably could not even get into my CRV! Again thankfully, my home church, Salem United Church of Christ, is located next to the VA clinic and my colleague, friend and pastor, the Rev. Doug Fowler, was in his office.

Doug borrowed a huge four-door Mercury from a parishioner who lives near the church and, with Doug and Tasha’s help—and lots of pain—I was able to get into the car and out of it after Doug drove me home. I then fixed myself lunch, dragging my right leg around in that Chester Goode style —I’m a-comin’, Mr. Dillon—that I wrote about last Saturday.

I made telephone calls back to the VA and to Dr. Mike’s office for medical help. At VA I was told that they will “try” to speed up the referral for me to obtain a (large) wheelchair that was made last month. Someone will come from Dr. Mike’s office to see me at the beginning of next week, which may be a problem since I have VA medical appointments on both Monday and Tuesday.   

I then took one of the pain meds and napped with Alex for a couple of hours. After helping Alex write a blog post about how his silly hoomin bean has again hurt his leg and how the cat who owns me is taking care of me, Alex and I both retired again, this time for the night, only to get up after about three hours because of the pain in my leg.

There are some strategic plans I need to make regarding my life, my car and next week’s appointments. I need some groceries for the weekend and have no way to get them. The CRV remains in the VA parking lot since Tasha could not drive it home for me because she doesn’t know how to drive a vehicle with a standard transmission. I must arrange transportation to the two VA medical appointments I have next week.

That’s the story. I am grateful for the help of Rev. Fowler and Tasha and most thankful that I didn’t wreck my car. One must look for the good things and the humor that can usually be found within bad situations!