Here’s the relevant bit of the CT scan of my wrist. As the radiologist put it, “a mildly displaced intra-articular fracture involves the palmar aspect of the triquetrum.” The orthopedist explained that sometimes when a joint receives a sharp shock, the specific speed and angle can be such that a ligament, instead of tearing and resulting in a sprain, can break off a piece of bone. Apparently this is actually preferable, as bone-to-bone healing is less complicated than ligament-to-bone healing. I’m informed that, since the other bones in my hand are still lined up just fine, I don’t need surgery. The treatment for this is exactly what it would be for a sprain: keep wearing the wrist splint I’m already wearing for up to another four weeks.
Tag: Health
You might have noticed I haven’t been posting here much lately. Short version: I got in a bicycle accident and broke my wrist. For the last two weeks my ability to type has been curtailed. It’s starting to feel better, though. Later today I’ll be meeting with an orthopedist to learn if I’m healing properly on my own or am going to require surgery on my hand.
This is larynx! Larynx lives in your throat and does lots of important stuff, like keeping things that aren’t air from getting in your lungs, and helping you cough when something wrong does get in there. Larynx has two shiny white strips–see them?–that close off the top of the trachea, the tube that leads to the lungs! Those strips are called the vocal chords, because they also help you speak! When the vocal chords stretch tight and almost closed, they let you vibrate air into tones that you can shape with your mouth into words! Try it now; say, “thank you” to larynx, because without larynx you wouldn’t be able to say “thank you” at all!
FUN FACTS: Larynx gets its name from the Greek word for “throat!”
OH NO! What happened to larynx?
It’s gotten sick! Larynx has acute laryngitis. That means that larynx has gotten so swollen that it can’t pull tight and vibrate the air anymore! See how the shiny white vocal chords have turned red and everything has gotten all puffy? Poor larynx! Acute laryngitis can be caused by many things, but it usually happens when you have a cold. If you get acute laryngitis, the best thing for it is to let your larynx rest! Just don’t talk until it goes away!
FUN FACTS: You can also get acute laryngitis by using your voice too much, like by cheering at a ballgame!
DID YOU KNOW? That the author of this website has had acute laryngitis for three days now? It’s true! He has barely spoken to anyone! He’s just been staying at home eating leftover Halloween candy and playing Metroid! These are also very good things to do if you get acute laryngitis!
It’s kind of appropriate that I’ve stayed in bed sick all day. Today is the 1-year anniversary of one of the most astoundingly terrible days I’ve ever had. I know, because it was so awful that the last thing I did before I went to bed that night was post about it on Facebook, for fear I would never believe it really happened otherwise. Let’s revisit one of the worst days I ever recorded for the internet. It will be fun!
Oct. 22 [2008]: Retrospective Itinerary
• Wake up. (around 12:00 noon.)
• Mess around on Facebook.
• Feel mild pain in right kidney.
• Take a shower.
• Feel intense pain in right kidney.
• Call girlfriend to say you won’t be able to take her to her doctor’s appointment, because you seem to have a kidney stone.
• Feel excruciating pain in right kidney.
• Call mother to take you to emergency room, then struggle into random clothing (nicest slacks, moth-eaten undershirt, flip flops).
• Feel utterly ludicrous agony in right kidney.
• Lie on the ground in emergency room parking lot until humanoid figure brings you a wheelchair.
• Fall out of wheelchair and lie on the floor under triage nurse’s desk.
• Spend a quarter of an hour writhing in pain in phlebotomist’s office, waiting for phlebotomist to arrive. Occasionally mutter “someone please help me.”
• Have blood drawn.
• Be unable to produce a urine sample.
• Get left in wheelchair blocking the doorway to the hospital while a room is prepared for you. Start to cry, just a little.
• Get admitted and taken to room. Put on gown.
• Just for fun, have another nurse draw several more vials of blood. (These will be declared unneeded and thrown in the trash a little while later.)
• Receive and IV and a saline drip.
• Receive an injection of morphine.
• Realize that morphine is love.
• Notice that girlfriend has arrived. She seems unwell.
• Pass kidney stone.
• Ask mother to take girlfriend to her doctor’s appointment. Explain that you will be fine, because your veins are full of love.
• Doze. Get IV removed. Get dressed. Sign discharge papers. Call a taxi to take you home.
• Receive call from mother, informing you that girlfriend’s doctor sent her to the emergency room.
• Have taxi take you across town to other hospital.
• Comfort girlfriend while she waits many hours.
• Comfort girlfriend while clumsy nurse awkwardly tries to plant an IV.
• Comfort girlfriend while she waits for injection of anti-nausea medication to take effect (Note: it never will; this medication is ineffective for her.)
• Wait in room while girlfriend is taken to get a CT scan of her head, to see if her weeks-long, increasingly severe headache is potentially fatal.
• Comfort girlfriend while waiting many more hours for results of scan. Notice that girlfriend’s discomfort does not seem at all lessened, despite the intravenous medications that she has received.
• Gently browbeat nurse into administering different medications. Watch tension finally melt from girlfriend’s face.
• Learn that CT scan was normal. Get discharged from hospital.
• Fill everybody’s prescriptions.
• Have mother take us home. Take girlfriend inside to put her to bed.
• Grab an empty trashcan and catch girlfriends third, fourth, and fifth bouts of vomiting, while trying not to stand in the first and second.
• Put girlfriend to bed.
• Drive to Wal-Mart to buy a mop.
• Return home. Fantasize about killing girlfriend’s cat for having tracked through the vomit.
• Mop up vomit.
• Mess around on Facebook.
• Go to bed. ( Around 3:20 in the morning.)
This occasionally now gets referenced in family lore as the Double Hospital Incident. Compared to this time a year ago, I have to say I’m feeling pretty good!
I’m been sick in bed all day, and the pressure in my sinuses seems to be pushing directly on the being-vaguely-pissy center of my brain. But as many of my friends are sick too, we can all goof off on twitter together.
KatWithSword Have just learned that I am being nominated for a postdoc fellowship. Feeling very overwhelmed and honored.
glorioushubris @KatWithSword Woo! You are totally fellow material. I have always thought of you as a fine fellow.
glorioushubris Tomorrow I see the doctor. Today I stay in bed and practice trashcan basketball with sneeze-shredded tissues.
gralinnaea @glorioushubris Sympathy and empathy. Can we form a club?
glorioushubris @gralinnaea Let’s form a suicide pact, suicide pacts are way sexier than clubs. How about if we’re still sick come World Fantasy, we off it.
gralinnaea @glorioushubris Ok, check. I feel that this should be done in a dramatic and literary way. Hmmm …
ferretthimself @glorioushubris Not to horn in, but can I off myself, too? I think my body needs a deadline.
glorioushubris @ferretthimself @gralinnaea We need Gra’s ruling, but I think you’re welcome Ferrett. I conceive of this as a very egalitarian suicide pact.
gralinnaea @glorioushubris @ferretthimself Absolutely. Hmmm … how many people do we need before we can call ourselves a suicide cult?
glorioushubris Last night Facebook offers to make everything French for me. I decline. Today Facebook decides it knows what’s best, and I NEED French. Why?
glorioushubris In the preferences tab my language is still set to English, but everything is in French just the same. Why do you suck so hard, facebook?
ferretthimself @glorioushubris Dude, Facebook is frenching you. Don’t you know what that means when the most popular kid in town likes you that way?
glorioushubris @ferretthimself Shit! And here I thought I’d gotten less oblivious since high school!
KatWithSword @glorioushubris I don’t know whether I’m flattered, or full of the need to confirm you mean fellow in a nice, gender-neutral sort of sense.
glorioushubris @KatWithSword It’s no good desiring not to go among the fellows, for we are all fellows here.
gralinnaea @KatWithSword You’ll always be my favorite gender-neutral fellow … wait, that’s what you meant, right?
KatWithSword @glorioushubris @gralinnaea I just want to make sure that one can be a fellow, and still wear a bright pink breast protector while fencing.
glorioushubris @KatWithSword It would take some convincing to make me believe that anything says fellowship more forcefully than a barbie-pink breastplate.
Additionally, today’s being-vaguely-pissy music comes to us from The Kills.