"right turn clyde..."

One friday morning in july, (might have been the 7^th) in 2007 or so I get up early, with my house mate chris and we head off on an early morning training ride before work. For several years, some friends and I have made it a goal to try and ride (on bicycles/road bikes) from my parents house in palmdale, to ventura beach on labor day. Its about a hundred mile ride give or take, depending on what roads we use. In anticipation of this ride, chris and I had been getting up early in the mornings and riding about 20 miles or so everyday to make sure we were in shape. On this particular day, we were on the home stetch, only a couple miles away from the house. We were riding pretty close together, to utilize the draft. I was right behind chris, my front tire over lapping his rear tire about half an inch just to the right side. We came up to an intersection, and I thought we were going to go straight, instead chris made a right turn. Because I was not expecting the turn, our tires rubbed and as I tried to jump off my bike to avoid injury, I couldnt get my feet unclipped from the pedals. I ended up going over the handle bars, and of course the first thing I did was to put my arms out to break the fall. When I finally stopped rolling and got seperated from my bike I began to feel the pain in my left arm. As I look down at my arm I notice that it is slightly bent in an unatural way. While chris is helping me up and making sure I am ok, a guy (the grout dr...he gave me his business card) pulls up to the intersection and checks to see if we are alright. When he sees what has happened, he offers to help us out. He throws my bike in the back seat of his car and gives me a ride to the house while chris rides his bike back. When I get to the house, I thank the guy for the ride. I put my bike away and change clothes as quickly as I can. When chris gets back, he does the same, then gives me a ride to the urgent care ( garrison family medical group). After I fill out the paper work, we take a seat and begin the wait. To pass the time I start examining my arm a little closer. I lean over and put my fist down on the carpet, and then try and bend my arm. It bends, but not at the wrist where it should, instead it bends near the forearm. I immediately decide I need pictures of this awesomeness. I pull out my phone and start taking pictures, about this time I notice the rest of the folks are watching me with horror in their eyes. As I put my phone away they call my name. Shortest wait ever! I head to the back, im sure to the relief of the folks still waiting. They sit me down in one of those small rooms and then dissapear for a while as usual, except this time I got to keep my clothes on! When the nurse, or assistant, or whatever the person who is not the doctor is called comes in to take a look, I explain what happened and immediately tell them ( just like I told the lady at the front) that I dont have insurance and will be paying in cash. (meaning dont do anything more than you need to!) the lady immediately says I will need to get x rays. So they take me into the little x ray room. Since I have been moving my arm around, and it has not been more than an hour or so since the crash I can still move my arm fairly easily to the positions they need for the x rays. I am then taken back to my little room. After a little while the doctor lady comes in. she is holding the x rays up to the light as she asks me what happened. After I recount my tale, she looks as my and smiles as she says “your not the brightest, but at least your kinda cute”. She then tells me I will most likely have to have my arm set. They dont do it here, so I will have to go to some other place. As she is telling me the name of the place, her assistant comes up and tells her I dont have insurance. The Doctor lady, pauses and then says “nevermind, the only people we send there are the ones with insurance, and the ones that are independantly wealthy”. She then gives me the name of a county hospital that I need to go to that is on the way to L.A., its called olive veiw. They put my arm in a sling, I pay my bill, which seems really low especially for having x rays taken, they hand me the x rays and send me on my way. We head back to the house, and then chris heads off to work, while I start looking for another ride. I call kim (she was the relief society pres of the singles ward at the time), I can tell by the way she answers that I have just woken her up. I ask if she has anything planned for the day, she answers with a weary no. so I ask her “if she minds if I ruing the beginning of her weekend”? She laughs a little and asks what I need. I explain the situation to her, and she replies that she would gladly give me a ride, she just needs an hour or so to get ready and head over. After hanging up with her, I call my boss Clay over at the tanker base and let him know that I will not make it into work today because I have to go in to get my arm set. He gives a short chuckle and tells me to let him know when I can come back to work. Soon kim arrives at the house, I grab my x rays and off we head. Olive veiw is roughly a little over fifty miles away, luckily traffic on the freeway is relatively light. After about an hour we finally arrive. We get out of the car and head inside to discover that the place is under renovation. There is plastic sheets and cones laid out all over the place. Since neither of us has ever been here, we talk to the guy at the info counter and he gives us some crazy directions (over the river and thru the woods type of stuff) so that we can navigate around all the construction. After about 20 min we make it up a couple floors and down several dark hallways to a small counter in the back of what looks like a storage room. Despite how difficult it was to find, there is a line! When I finally make it to the front, and tell the lady why I am here, she looks at my arm and tells me that they only set broken bones in the hand. For anything above the wrist I will have to go to USC -L.A. County General. Great, another place that I have no idea where it is! The lady at the desk was kind enough to give us a map. As we try and navigate our way back, I realize we should have left a trail of cookie crumbs to help us out. When we get back to the car, I ask kim if she can take me to this new destination, being the kind person she is, she says yes. We then hop back on the freeway and head deeper into L.A.. after about 30 min, my stomach reminds me that I have not yet eaten today. I thank kim again for wasting her day and helping me out, and tell her that I will take her out to eat after we finish at this next place. It takes a while, but we finally get there. There are so many buildings and so little parking! This makes the last place look like a piece of cake to navigate. After some searching by trial and error, we find where I need to be. Luckily they have the routes painted in different colors on the floor which makes the indoor navigation rather pleasant. We make it to the waiting room, grab a seat, and you guessed it.... we wait, and wait, and wait, and then wait some more. After several hours of waiting in a room where only a handfull of us speak english, they call my name and direct me to a back room. I start to get a little excited, cause this means progress. In this back room they ask me what happened, where do I live, work and tons of other basic questions. The lady asking me all the questions diligently fills out several forms at the same time. After about an hour, she sends me back to the waiting room. By this time, my arm hurts a lot, even the slightest movement sends pain screaming up my arm, and I have yet to be given any sort of pain meds. After a couple more hours, they call my name again. This time they direct me around the corner to a line in front of a small counter next to one of those doors that only opens if someone on the other side lets you in. this line moves relatively fast, and after about 20 min I make it inside the magic door (kim is forced to stay behind and wait) which contains a long hallway littered with gurneys, and a large semi open space that has been sectioned off in many places by curtains hanging from the ceiling. There are also several small cubicles set up. At last something that resembles the workings of a hospital instead of a gloomy waiting room!

Once thru the door, I am asked several questions and then one of those fancy medical bracelets gets attatched to my wrist. They sit me on a gurney in the hall way, and I begin another session of lets see who can wait the longest. As I am sitting there, I lean back against the wall and close my eyes in an attempt to sleep. I am exhausted, and am not sure what time it is since there are no clocks on the walls. After about forty five minutes, someone wearing scrubs leads me to a back room where there is a short asian man waiting. The first words out of his mouth are “we need to take some x rays”, to which I reply, I already got some today, they are right here. I then hand him the envelope with the x rays from that morning. To which he replies, we still need to take more, we dont use any x rays that are not ours. Of course my first thought is yea right, you just want to make more money! He then leads me to the xray machine and directs me to place my arm on the table. As I place my arm on the table in the only position it will go, he informs me that he needs it turned a certain way in order to get the view he needs, and procedes to grab my arm and attempt to turn it the desired direction. Immediately intense pain shoots through my arm and I grab the edge of the plastic chair I was sitting on. The xray tech flinches and backs away when he notices I have bent the chair. He then runs out of the room, when he returns he has a doctor with him, and I can hear him tell the doctor that he will not try to take the x rays again until I have been shot full of pain killers. Of course upon hearing this, the doctor thinks he knows best and tells the x ray tech that he was doing it wrong. So next the doctor tries, and of course gets the same results. I am then led out of the room and back down the hallway where I am told to sit on a gurney. A couple minutes later the doctor comes by and injects me full of morphine. I am then left to myself for about ten minutes before the doctor returns and escorts me back to the xray room. After several tries, they realise the morphine was not strong enough. At this point, wanting to just get it over with, I ask them to show me what position they want my arm in, and then tell them they better be ready to take the x ray. I give them a 3 count, and then grit my teeth and yell out as I use my good arm to bend the broken one and force it into the desired position. The doctor watches for a couple seconds and then leaves the room. A few moments later the xray tech comes back and asks where the doctor went, I tell him im not sure. I never saw that doctor again. I was then led down a different hallway by some nurse that I had not seen before. She took me to a large room that was partitioned off by curtains, although all the curtains where pushed aside so you could see everything going on. There were several people in their own area either lying or sitting on gurneys. I was pointed towards an open one and told to lay down. After what felt like forever, another nurse came by and asked me if I had someone I could call for transportation when they were done with me. Feeling like I had been here for way to long, I inquired of the time, and was informed that it was 7pm. I told her about kim who was still in the waiting room. The nurse then told me to send her home since I would be here for several days. “several days! Why does it take several days to get a broken bone set and a cast put on!”. At the time I was informed that I was going to need a steel plate and some screws put in. of course they wouldnt let me walk back out to tell her, so I wrote a note and attatched it to the useless xrays I had been holding on to all day, so that the nurse could give them to kim to hold onto for me. The nurse then left, and I was back to laying there watching and listening to what was going on around me. Apparently one of the nurses was upset that she got called back into work, and several of the nurses were feuding with one of the doctors. There was a girl that looked like she was about 16 sitting on the gurney straight across from me. She had a bruise on her face. All the other people in the area were non english speakers. The nurse that was pissed off was the one assigned to keep track of me, so everytime she came by to check on how I was doing, I made sure I was really nice to her, so as to avoid any wrath she might be ready to inflict. After the nurse had come by several times and I was certain she was not going to drug me and harvest my organs if I made her mad, I asked her if I could get something to eat, since I had not eaten all day. She told me I had to wait for the doctor to check me out first. After another couple hours, the doctor finally came by. He was quite upset to find that my arm was still in a sling. Apparently it was suppose to be fully extended and splinted to make sure I did not do any more damage to it. So he called the upset nurse over to help him remove the sling and straighten out my arm. And can you guess what position he wanted my arm in..... thats right, the same position that was needed for the xray! As the doctor starts to maneuver my arm, the nurse notices the scoul on my face and the deathgrip I have on the edge of the gurney, so she yells at the doctor to stop. The doctor of course ignores her and continues on. At this point I happened to look across to the girl sitting across from me, who after watching my ordeal is now freaking out. Another nurse comes and escorts her away, and I dont see her again either. After a few more seconds of useless effort the nurse tells the doctor that she will refuse to help him if he does not get me painkillers first, pointing out my facial expression and grip on the gurney. So the doctor gives in and soon I am injected with more morphine (definitely good that I was nice to the nurse from the beginning) and left to sit for a while to give it a change to kick in. eventually the doctor comes back, and successfully gets my arm splinted into the desired position. I am then wheeled down the hall and into an elevator. I am taken several floors up and wheeled into a giant room with no dividers. There are 4 other people on gurneys in the room. One old guy, 2 guys that look like they are in their 20's and a girl also in her 20's who barely speaks any english. Its not long before I realise the 2 younger guys are handcuffed to their beds. After talking to one of them for a little while, I find out the floor above us is for the prison, and they are the overflow. When the next nurse comes in I try and get some food, but she tells me I am scheduled for surgery on sunday and that I cant eat for at least 24 hours before surgery. Since it is now 2 am on saturday she cant give me any food! She then gives me another shot of morphine before leaving. Eventually I pass out. When I wake up I find that cell reception in the hospital sucks. I manage to call my boss and tell him where im at so that he doesnt expect me to show up for work for a while. At the time my parents and brother were in hawaii with some friends on vacation ( a vacation I passed up cause I couldnt miss work) so I sent them a text letting them know I broke my arm and was at the hospital. I dont remember who, but someone called my cousin josh and let him know of my perdicament, he was able to come by and give me a blessing. All day saturday I waited with anticipation for the surgery to be done with so I could get some food!. I killed time by texting friends and slipping in and out of morphine induced sleep. One of the times I awoke, I found that one of the guys had slipped his cuffs and was having sex with the girl on the other side of the room, I just closed my eyes and drifted off back to sleep.

Eventually sunday came, and everytime a nurse came in the room I was expecting to be wheeled off to surgery. The nurses came in a dropped off food for the other people in the room, and gave out medication, and of course more morphine, and then they would leave, with me still sitting there waiting. Sometime around 11 pm the nurse finally came in to get me for surgery. This was met with cheers and applause by the others in the room, as everyone had began to wonder if it was really gonna happen. The nurse wheeled me back to the elevator and took me up to the top floor. I was then placed in a large room filled with papers and machines that I didnt recognize. This place was run by a couple of korean ladies, who preferred not to speak english. After waiting for a while they brought me consent forms to sign and gave me a run down of what was suppose to happen. After a couple hours they gave me more morphine and then started to wheel me to the operating room. When we reached the operating room, I was parked outside in the hallway and told to wait for some one to get me. After about a half hour a nurse came and started to wheel me back to the room I had just come from! She told me that the hospital had just received several gunshot victims, and since they take priority I would have to wait till another day. After several handoffs by different nurses I eventually made it back down to my room with the room with inmates. They were all surprised to see me back so soon, and even more surprised when I told them what happened. The one that had slipped his cuffs earlier flagged down a nurse and talked her into bringing me some food from the cafeteria. It was now early monday morning and it was the first time I had eaten since thursday night. After eating what little food the nurse could scrounge up, I got my much needed dose of morphine and went to sleep. I woke up several hours later with a regular tray of foot on the table next to me! Finally back to a normal eating schedule. Later on that day I was moved down the hallway to another room, where I had a different nurse who was in charge of me. The room was petitioned off with sheets every 6 feet. After laying in my sheeted off section and listening for several minutes it became very apparent that I was the only english speaking person in the room. I split the majority of my time between eating, morphine and sleep, and the occasional text when I could get reception. Tuesday morning I awoke with the great expectation of food, only to be informed that I was scheduled for surgery on wednesday, and since there was a no food for 24 hours prior policy I would not be getting any food for a while :( tuesday was filled with more morphine and sleeping. Wednesday arrived, and I waited and waited and waited, got some morphine and then waited some more. Sometime late in the afternoon I was wheeled back up to the korean fortress in the top floor. After a repeat of the signing of paperwork and waiting forever to move to the operating room, a group of nurses finally came in and took me away. On the way they asked if I had any questions or concerns for them or the doctor. I wasnt really worried about the surgery, my only request was that I could stay awak and watch, which of course they said no to. On the way to the operating room they injected some magic sleep potion into my I.V. And I was out. I woke up what seemed like only moments later being wheeled down a hallway. I could hear the nursed commenting that I had woken up much sooner than expected. They told me the surgery was over and that it went well. I was taken back to the korean fortress and parked on the other side of the room next to several other beds. Shortly after being parked I began to feel excrutiating pain in my arm. I asked the lady in charge of the area for some painkillers, and she told me she was not authorized to give me any, which I found irritating since she had already given me morphine on 2 other occasions. So I waited for a few minutes, and the pain continued to get worse, so I asked again. Of course she told me again that she could not give my any. Through clenched teeth I told her if she wasnt gonna give me any then she better hurry up and find someone who could she was gonna start hating her shift. After about a half hour of her sitting at her desk doing nothing I started to yell for some one to get me some painkillers. The lady was not happy with this course of action. She told me I needed to be quiet. I refused and told her she had her chance but since she didnt act she was stuck with me. After a few minutes of this, she decided she couldnt handle it and left to find some one who was authorized to give me painkillers. Several minutes later a doctor came in to find out what the problem was. When the lady told the doctor was was going on he gave her a look like she was retarded and told her if I needed some painkillers to give me some. So they gave me a shot of morphine, and nothing happened. The pain stayed. Shortly after they came and wheeled me away towards my room. I kept telling them something was wrong with arm, and that the pain was getting worse. When we got to the elevator they gave me another shot. Which also had no effect. When they got me back to the room I was practically screaming for them to get the doctor and find out what was wrong. At this time they gave me another shot with still no effect. I continued to tell them they needed to find out what was wrong, and that if necessary they needed to cut my arm off if it would make the pain go away. All the other patients and there visitors looked terrified. Around this time the doctor showed up, and like all the others gave me another shot as he asked me what was wrong. I told him it felt like someone was trying to cut my arm off. So he looked at the bandage and discovered it was put on to tight and was cutting off all the curculation. As soon as he noticed this he undid it. Instantly I felt a huge rush go to my head and it felt like I was falling into a sea of clouds! I later found out that the bandage had prevented the morphine from flowing through me, and so when it was undone all 4 shots hit me at once ( which was amazing by the way. I can now see how people get hooked on that stuff). I woke up many hours later, and noticed a tray of food on the table next to me. I ate several bites before I fell back into my sea of clouds. Over the next day I would wake up long enough to eat a few bites and then pass back out still feeling the effects of the morphine. Later on that night, 2 hot chicks came in to check on me. They informed me that they were the surgeons who did the work on my arm and that they just wanted to make sure I was doing alright. I talked to them for a few minutes, long enough to find out they were both married. I asked them if I could take their picture since none of my friends would believe that 2 hot doctors were the ones that had stitched me up. They were nice enough to oblige. (if I can find the photo I will post it at the bottom of the story). Thursday was mostly uneventful, until about mid day when they told me I was gonna be able to go home if I could find a ride. I sent out a couple texts and a few hours later I was signed out of the hospital and on my way home! I’m pretty sure it was Melissa who gave me a ride home.