The unexpected

You may not believe this. I am having trouble believing it myself – the irony of it all. In the post before last, I wrote about how much I hate to visit doctors, and now they surround me.

I had a full day yesterday helping my youngest daughter prepare for her school formal. She had been given the task of arranging flowers for the tables, all fifteen of them. My husband took her out early in the morning to collect the flowers from an inexpensive florist. The school gave her a low budget and so she decided to use old jars for vases, a large collection, all shapes and sizes that her older sister had collected in March for her wedding.

Some of the glasses still needed their stickers removed or a final clean so at the last minute, I ran a load through the dishwasher, packed the jars, rushed her off to the hairdressers and then onto the Boulevard in Kew where the formal was held.

We managed to get to Kew by three and began to arrange the flowers. One of the teachers was trying to stick electric lights on a column. She had brought masking tape to hold the lights in place, but it was visible against the white and since I was already going to the chemist to fetch some nausea medication for my daughter who was feeling poorly could I please get some clear sticky tap. I drove down to the nearest chemist in High street and parked outside the Kew post office, now known as the QPO.

It was my fault, I know. I was in a rush. I was like a ‘headless chook’ as my husband sometimes complains. I crossed the road in High street to get back to my car. The lights were green, the little man was flashing. I held my purchases in my hands and perhaps to save time I took the end of the crossing at an angle.

It happened in slow motion. I did not see the car, a little white Cortina I think, driven by a P Plater. She stopped at the crossing but not before she managed to interrupt my final few feet at the end of the crossing.

It’s hard to know whether the car hit me. I have a vague memory of a thud, certainly the scrape of wheels on bitumen and then I was on all fours on the road trying to pick up the sticky tape that had gone sprawling down the road.

I felt something hurt in my leg, as if I had twisted it and sat on the curb with the driver, a young woman and her companion, as we tried to decide whether or not I was okay,

I was in shock I suppose.
‘I have to get back to my daughter,’ I said. My car was nearby I told them but when I tried to stand I could not.

My husband arrived ten minutes after I rang him and after reorganising my daughter via her sisters, he took me to the emergency department at Cabrini hospital, where several years ago I gave birth to three of my daughters. Several x-rays of my left leg and it seems I have a broken tibia up near the knee joint.

I cannot bend my leg for the pain. The doctor applied a cast from the top of my thigh to my ankle. He insisted I stay in hospital for a couple of days until the orthopaedic surgeon visits. So here I am in a four bed ward on 3 North the orthopaedic ward, surrounded by three old women, one of whom is demented following surgery, and another the exact opposite, an articulate and intelligent eighty two year old who is about to go off for rehabilitation following her second hip replacement.

I am adrift on painkillers, something that is a derivative of morphine, they tell me. So please forgive my writing. I thought to let you know why I might be slower than usual to respond to your previous comments on my latest post.