Today was the big day: a trip to the hand specialist to see what was wrong with my hand which I hurt the week before the softball tournament in Tampa. It's been almost three weeks and it still hurts, so I was very much concerned about a break or a torn ligament.
My appointment was for 9:30 down in Hyde Park at the University of Chicago. Not a bad trip trip, but during rush hour, it's not fun. So I left my place around 8:30 and traffic at Belmont was all backed up due to some construction along Sheridan. That meant I wasn't going to make it on time or I had to find a different way to get onto Lake Shore Drive. Being ever ingenious, I opted to go NORTH to Irving Park, even though I eventually needed to go south. It started off fine, but then ended up in an alley with exit. Mind you, there previously was an exit, but now there is a chain link fence blocking it off. Nice.
While turning around from said alley, I ended up on a slope with the trunk of the car significantly lower than the front. Unfortunately, the sun had not made its way to the alley in days, so the slope was covered in ice and not only were my front tires just spinning, my car was actually sliding down the slope towards a parking structure. Not good. After sliding to an angle though, I was able to extricate myself from the alley and onto Irving.
The rest of the trip went smoothly until I got to the parking garage where, apparently, every sick person in Chicago was already parked. Finally, on the last of six very large parking levels, I was able to find a spot. Even with all that happening though, I was waiting in line to check in with three minutes to spare.
The doctor came in, said hi, looked at my chart, said "This isn't right." and left the room. About ten minutes later a resident came in to examine me. Finding nothing conclusive, she sent me for x-rays. After waiting again, I finally got to see the doc. Diagnosis: a sprain for which I would need a splint to keep it from being irritated. In the grand scheme of things, the diagnosis was about as good as I could expect.
The good folks in the hand rehabilitation area made a custom molded splint for me and 30 minutes later I was on the road. It was noon and time for lunch.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Glad the news was good! (relatively speaking). I may not give two rats asses (available from T-Rex Hunter.com) about the Cubs or Bears (go Colbert) but I do root for my aging softball hero.
me too! seems like after all the driving shenanigans the doctor visit was a happy ending.
AWESOME, glad the paw is okay! PS: if you moved to the burbs, you could have been done in half the time...
That may be true, but then he'd be stuck in the 'burbs. :-)
Seriously, Joe, that's great news on both the medical and traffic fronts. If it were me, I would've budgeted the trip to take 40 minutes and have been horribly late.
Thanks for all the kind words folks. I really was relieved when I looked over the doc's shoulder at the x-rays and didn't see any bone fragments chipped off.
I think I was able to play in Tampa with it because it was my throwing hand. It may have been injured a bit too while going through the airport with four bags. If I didn't pack like an old woman, maybe I'd be ok!
Post a Comment