GIVE ME A BREAK
Every cloud has a silver lining
I like that saying, and in my experience, it seems to be true.
The clouds, of course, refer to hardships, and the silver linings represent the positive things that always accompany our problems. Okay, ‘always’ could be an exaggeration, but I believe using that word is valid as long as we are willing to look for the positives… and we are open to the possibility that good things happen to our souls when we die.
But I don’t want to talk about the afterlife now; I’ll save cheery stuff like that for later. What I really want to do is tell you about the dangers of playing frisbee. Especially for 64-year-old geezers like me who try to catch the flying discs while running barefoot on wet grass-covered hills in remote campsites.
Yeah, that’s what I did… and I think I would have caught the thing if my right foot hadn’t slid into a depression causing me to tumble over and break my ankle. This is the cloud part.
So is the fact that the ambulance never arrived and the x-ray department was closed at the local hospital on the English coast because it was Sunday, which meant I couldn’t get my injury assessed until 20 hours after it happened.
So is the fact the referral hospital in Cornwall refused to admit me, which required my partner and her kids to take down the tent and pack the car so we could make the four-hour drive back to the midlands to find a hospital to sort out my surgery. The three breaks are pretty bad and at least two will require screws.
That’s right, I’m writing this before any surgery has taken place because the doctors tell me my ankle is too swollen for them to operate. So, until it goes down, even though there is no metal in my leg yet, I seem to be screwed. But I don’t think I am, because some very skilled doctors are going to sort this out and along with the clouds, I’ve had several shiny linings.
For one thing, I was very lucky my ankle bones lined up again when I flexed my toes toward my knee. When I first fell, my foot twisted about 30 degrees towards the little toe. And once I did the flex, the pain dropped to a tolerable level. And then there was the calm well-informed help I received from Sal and her kids, one of whom is a climbing instructor who has experience with ankle injuries.
And, of course, there is the financial thing. I was born in the United States and if I’d had the same injury there and I wasn’t insured, treatment would have cost me about P35,000 with additional charges for an ambulance, emergency room admission and physiotherapy. That’s why Americans fork out P5,000 a month for medical insurance.
In Botswana, treatment for the same injury would cost P5 to get into a government hospital and the rest would be free. But since I’m being treated in the UK, I won’t be paying a single thebe for anything.
So, as far as I’m concerned, some of my recent breaks have been very positive indeed.