Really. There can’t be a dull moment, can there? No such thing can ever be allowed to happen, can it?

Some time back, my friend VC and I had planned a shopping junket to our favorite boutique and its associated kitsch shops over on the west side today. After impoverishing ourselves on appropriately countercultural costumes, we would go over to our favorite tea room for lunch.

Downtown Glendale is full of vintage bungalows, dating back to the 1910s and 20s. They’re now occupied by quaint little gift, clothing, and (heh!) “antique” shops. On the way from the favored clothing boutique to the coveted restaurant, we stopped at our favorite kitsch shop, which indeed did offer the ridiculous object I’ve been searching for these past few weeks. Woo hoo! I knew it!

But…when we bounce in the front door, I trip over a three-inch high step at the entrance and fall flat on my face. I put my hand out by instinct, and of course spavin my wrist in the process.

I think it’s not broken, because it doesn’t swell and I still have the full range of motion. But it hurts like hell. Really: I hafta say it hurt more than any acute injury I’ve ever enjoyed. Felt like surely a fracture must have happened in all those complicated little wrist bones.

But shortly the worst of the pain passed. I put a decent face on it because I didn’t think I was seriously hurt, and the shop’s proprietor was in a panic.

Ohhkayyy…so there we are: the drama of the day. Never fails, eh?

From there we proceed next door to the restaurant, where…really, given week after week after week of shit,  I just do NOT feel like eating. Order a cup of soup that I don’t want; choke on a spoonful of it; set it aside. Hurt, whine, and worry. (I’m very good at whining, as you might imagine…) Visit the laydeez on the way out; have one heckuva time wriggling out of and writhing back in to the ever-so-slightly too tight size 8 jeans, using just one hand.

We each head back into Phoenix in our respective chariots.

Driving with one hand, I get about halfway across Glendale Avenue when I think…damn! Where’s that doodad I bought?

Not in the car, that’s for sure. So have to pull a U-ie and schlep ALL THE WAY back into Glendale, park, hike to the restaurant. Amazingly, no one had stolen the just-purchased doodad. Someone had set it aside in the Laydeez Room, and the maîtresse d’ found it.

Back into the homicidal traffic: retrace my steps toward home. Debate, each yard of the way:

• Call young Dr. Kildare?
• Call the Mayo, get routed to a PA on the phone, who will just guess at the problem??
• Drive to the urgent care facility up the road in the hood, which no doubt will be full of gunshot, knife, and overdose victims???
• Go home, wrap an elastic bandage around the wrist, and hope for the best????

As I’m contemplating those alternatives, I approach Conduit of Blight Blvd., and there…what should I espy to my amazement but a BRAND-NEW BANNER HOSPITAL URGENT CARE FACILITY! Right on the corner of Glendale Road and Conduit of Blight!

Hot diggety!!!!!

Veered across the train tracks into the parking lot, charged in the front door, and…there was NO ONE ELSE THERE!

Got right in…before I could even sit down in the waiting room. They X-rayed the wounded paw from several directions and then, taking the opportunity to nag me about the osteoporosis and the osteopenia, said there was no fracture. AND they kindly gave me this velcro splint thing that really helps with the pain. Not only that, but it leaves the fingers free to tap the keyboard. 😀

Poor li’l medic also fretted about the blood pressure: astronomical. Right. A-n-n-d why would that be?

Why, indeed:

• The patient is in a freestanding ER, an environment she hates, and is about to do medical business with people she’s never seen in her life.
• She’s just driven, steering with one hand, way to Hell and gone across Glendale Road through homicidal traffic, a junket in which she’s had to navigate an aggressive U-turn, traipse all the way back into an adjacent city, park, beg for a carelessly lost package, and then retrace her route back through a fairly dire slum.
• Her hand hurts.
• Despite having just gone to the bathroom, she again needs to pee so bad she thinks she’s going to explode.
• Her pants are way too tight.
• They’ve perched her on the side of an examination table with her feet hanging in the air (this drives up BP numbers) and they’ve let her hand fall into her lap (ditto).
• Plus of course she hatesloathesanddespises having her blood pressure taken, and she feels about the same in regard to filling out forms and answering nosy questions.

Is there a reason why the BP figures indicate I’m in orbit around Saturn?

Well. I’m still alive. So the neglected little dawg and I went out for the mile’s walk that we missed this morning.

😮 😀 😮

Wow! How amazing. I was so thrilled to find that place. It’s a new addition to our part of town, and it could NOT have been more perfectly located. The staff were very kind and acted like they knew what they were doing.* And I got an X-ray promptly, it was seen by a real radiologist promptly, and within minutes I had his (reassuring) opinion.

*Well. Except for not knowing how to take a reasonably accurate blood pressure reading…

Images

Glendale: John D. McNair house. By Marine 69-71 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25316396
Hand splint: DepositPhotos