James's Weblog

For once in my life, I’ve actually started playing sports. One of my coworkers organized a small volleyball sports league that I’ve been participating in for the last three weeks.

Yesterday I jumped for the ball at the same time as someone on the other side of the net, and I guess we collided on the way down and somehow fell on each other with a very audible cracking sound. A quick trip to the hospital emergency room later, and I discovered that I’ve fractured my left fibula in two places. Who knew volleyball could be so dangerous?

It’s the first bone I’ve ever broken (that I’m aware of, at least). Sigh.

The hospital emergency room took x-rays, showed me pictures of the fractures, and put my leg in a splint. The doctors there weren’t able to set the bone, however, and told me to see an orthipedist. I wondered if I should ask them for my x-ray film, but I figured they would give them to me if they thought I’d need them. Besides, isn’t everything done on computers these days?

This morning I called the orthopedist the hospital referred me to. The receptionist set up an appointment for me in the afternoon, said that she’d get the x-rays from the hospital, and finally asked me for my phone number in case there were any problems. When I showed up for my appointment, however, they didn’t have my x-ray results. They didn’t know my date of birth, which the hospital needed to release my information. Why didn’t they call me? What the hospital eventually did fax over was not a copy of my film but a description: “two-part fracture in fibula”, more or less.

The orthopedist couldn’t do much without the x-ray pictures; I described what I remembered to him, and he could only make some conjectures. Finally my dad drove me back to the hospital, which luckily was nearby, I picked up my film, and I went back to the orthopedist. And after all that, the orthopedist didn’t really do anything. He thinks my bone doesn’t need to be set, because the three fragments of my fibula apparently are aligned well enough that it should be able to heal without a cast. Hmph.