Diaster Strikes!

I am typing this with one hand.

Why? Because my left arm is in the same temporary splint that they put on it in the emergency room last Friday night.

The following is the long version that will bring you up up date, if you are interested.

Last Friday I loaded my car to leave work. As usual, I put my teaching bags in the back, then I walked to the passenger door, opened it and placed my purse and my new laptop on the seat. I was thinking about which Japanese podcast to listen to on the way home.

I closed the car door and that is when the trouble started. I tripped. I don't know what it was that I tripped on, but I was falling forward and I did the only natural thing. I tried to break my fall.

My right palm slid on the asphalt. My knees slid on the asphalt. My left palm didn't slide.

I knew something was horribly wrong. My left arm, or was it my wrist, didn't look right. It hurt in a strange, distanced sort of way.

I supported my left hand with my right and headed back to the building. I ran into another faculty member and her daughter on their way out of the building. She sent her daughter on ahead of us to look for the nurse while she walked me back inside,

I was lucky. The nurse was still at school. She sat me down and started back together as best she could. She cleaned and bandaged my bloody, scraped up knees and right palm while I kept my left arm flat on her desktop. Then she put a splint on my left arm. By then I knew how bad it hurt.

I was cursing a blue streak that would have made any sailor righteously proud. Gratefully all the students were gone.

My principal stopped by. He's on crutches right now, having recently broken his ankle. Other teachers stopped and looked in, most of them offered words of condolence along with their thoughts about the possibilities of my still going to Japan.

My husband was called to come pick me up and take me to the hospital.

One of my fellow teachers and her husband got my car back to my house.

More later.