Hey! Dale, good to hear from you! ----- Original Message ----- From: Dale Leavens To: blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 9:52 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] [OT] Thanks for your kind thoughts.
Good evening list, Many of you know that I sustained a fall on Monday morning March 12 on my way to work. The front door is in the middle of my house which faces east and opens onto a concrete block and lockstone sort of pedestal about 20 inches above the front lawn, the lawn slopes down to the street but is broken by a retaining wall about three and a half feet high with a hedge behind the top of that wall. I have a series of steps about 30 inches long which are out about two feet from the front of the house and run down the front of the house to the north descending below the level of the lawn but to the level of the driveway which runs east to the avenue. I had just stepped off of the last step onto the lockstone sidewalk along the side of the driveway when my right foot shot out and I fell backward. I was aware that for some reason my right toes just weren't coming up and I felt the right tibia and fibula crunch. Over Sunday night we had apparently had some freezing rain that turned to snow. Once I arranged my foot sort of I pulled out my cell phone and called the ambulance, lying on my left side in the snow propping the ankle with my left toe. I had thought of crawling up the stairs to the house and leaning on the door bell having locked the door behind me but decided that would only hurt a lot and I would have to be brought back down anyway. So I tell the dispatcher my name, where I was laying with a broken leg and that I would require an ambulance. The joys of these people! How old are you? what is your date of birth? Are you bleeding? Are you hurt any other place? Did you bump your head? ... I finally said "Send me a freaking car now! I am laying in the snow in my driveway and the station isn't a thousand yards from where I am laying then hung up! Had she stopped to dispatch then come back on maybe I would have been a little more patient. Then I telephoned Janet who I thought had probably gone up to the shower, she threw on some clothes and came out to get my computer just as the ambulance turned up. Soon I was in the Emergency Room and I was right, a lower quarter tib & fib fracture. They put on a bit of a back slab after a couple of injections and I spent the rest of the day and that night in the hospital in Cochrane then into another ambulance to timmins in the morning where the orthopedic surgeon confirmed what I had figured, an intramedullary rod through the length of the tibia to just above the ankle joint then screws run in laterally just below the knee and just above the ankle. I spent the night in the timmins Hospital and just before noon it was back into an ambulance and back to our Cochran Hospital early Wednesday afternoon. Friday afternoon they came to take a blood sugar. "Why?" My last one was high. "That can't be, I haven't had a last one, you must have someone else requiring insulin." Turns out that the admission urine test showed high sugar and my glucometry turned out to be 19. So, it could be that I am now diabetic. I decided to stay in the hospital a couple of more days partly because I was a bit bummed out by that news and partly to see how I responded to the Metformin they gave me since I don't have any means of monitoring that here. I came home on Monday Afternoon. I am still a little under the weather! Non-weight bearing for 6 weeks just on time for our trip to England on April 21st. That is going to be a pretty dull vacation by the look of it. I will have to go back to Timmins on Tuesday for the Orthopedic clinic, arranging a ride will be the issue but I expect in a couple of more days much of the pain should be subsiding certainly it is a lot better than last week. Loads of people have been very sympathetic, the staff collection was huge, a massive basket of fruit and candy and such and my part-time Department assistant brought around the card with as much change! Anyway, I have got through most of the e-mail now, I don't like to sit here at the computer more than a little while at a time just yet. I have selected out a couple of messages though to respond and suggest to and will probably start that tomorrow. They are supposed to come over tomorrow to change my dressings and some dood is to bring a stool so I can sit in my shower rather than on a plastic milk crate in the bottom of the Jacuzzi as I am presently doing with a hand hose although that turns out to be working pretty well. Anyway, here I am, limping back. Dan, I should be able to do most of the work-up on the router table, don't have the fence built yet and I probably want to make a couple of different fences but I can catch up on all the documentation. Dale Leavens, Cochrane Ontario Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] Skype DaleLeavens Come and meet Aurora, Nakita and Nanook at our polar bear habitat. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. 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